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The head of one of the nation’s foremost conservative think tanks says school choice is the policy answer to America’s failing public schools.
“Public schools aren’t adequately serving the children that need an education in order to get a fair and open start in American society,” Robert Doar, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon. “It’s been obvious for years that the public education system … does not provide enough choice and opportunity and advantages for poor and struggling kids.”
Doar spoke to Gurdon as part of the Washington Examiner’s Empowering Families in Education initiative as students begin a new school year.
In the interview, Doar touted school choice as the policy needed to enhance innovation and excellence in education because it would create competition in the education system.
“August is a month for parents to make big decisions,” he said. “I have four kids, my wife and I went through this, and it’s good to have choices for your children so they can get better opportunities to advance in American society.”
Doar said that the primary opposition to school choice policies comes from teachers unions, which donate significant sums of money to the Democratic Party, that in turn have refused to back such programs.
“Opposition to this is about the campaign contributions that public education unions make to Democratic politicians, it is solely about that,” he said. “They are huge funders of Democratic politicians in state legislatures, and Republican politicians in state legislatures, and as a result of that, the state legislatures are less supportive of school choice than they should be.”
Gurdon noted that the unions and their allies often claim that school choice initiatives are attempts to limit funding for public education, which Doar said was a claim devoid of evidence.
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“There’s adequate funding for public education,” Doar said. “In the places of the country that we’re talking about … the opportunities offered by school choice are not draining funding. What they are doing, and this is a tough thing for schools, is they’re taking children and families who are determined to get a better option for their kids out of bad schools and putting them in better schools, leaving those schools without the benefit of having those families involved.”
