Every day, it becomes clearer that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is standing atop a platform built solely of buzzwords.
She knows the words that excite her base, but doesn’t always seem to know their meaning. Playing this dangerous game has gotten her in trouble on Israeli-Palestinian relations and made her look bad on unemployment. Shockingly, she also talked herself into an interesting position which would infuriate her party’s special interests when she brushed up against the idea of school choice.
While Ocasio-Cortez answers every question with more government, on education at least, she correctly identifies the problem. In fact, she identifies with it personally, telling voters again and again that she came from “a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.” Born in a bad Bronx neighborhood, her parents eventually voted with their feet and moved into a better school district for her benefit.
Now, Ocasio-Cortez wants to help others follow in her footsteps. During a PBS interview on “Firing Line,” the socialist said, “The basic idea that the immediate property taxes of a certain zip code funds that local public schools,” Ocasio-Cortez said diagnosing the current problem with the public education system, is that “it creates this mad dash.”
But unfortunately, Ocasio-Cortez fumbles badly after the diagnosis. She doesn’t propose severing the chain between environment and education with things like tuition vouchers or charter schools. She seems to call for more government funding instead.
“I think that, honestly, one of the things that we really need to reassess when we talk about economic inequality and reducing economic inequality is our basic system of funding schools,” she concludes.
This message of sending more taxpayer money at a failing government system is very on brand for a socialist who has called for free college tuition. But something truly subversive would be to break out of the tired ideological mold and push for a new pragmatic solution. Ocasio-Cortez understands the problem. She lived it, and thanks to her parents, she overcame it.
Ocasio-Cortez should keep her diagnosis but go one more step. Of course, it would come with considerable risk. One doesn’t become a liberal darling by angering traditional power brokers like the public school teacher’s unions. If she did embrace school choice, it would create a hell-storm like no other. It might even be a revolution.
