Word: petersons
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School choice is the focus of Peterson's optimism. It is school choice, he writes, that will lift the United States from the bottom of the barrel. It is our freedom that will save us. Or as Peterson puts it, "the discipline of the marketplace" will help public schools "address their most serious problems." Before turning to this somewhat mystical promise, we must note that Peterson is not in the business of saving the public schools. His concern is for the nation's students, and if the public schools should survive the process, so much the better...
This concern for the students first is the moral center of Peterson's argument. Put simply, Peterson is saying that students who cannot afford private school deserve an education of private school quality. This is a great thing to say, and it should be said louder, clearer and more frequently...
Following through with Peterson's program would certainly shake things up. School choice would bring heat to bear on the public schools and sharpen our understanding of the injustices of the current system. Unfortunately, we already know that the educational system is on the rocks...
...need to address public schools' "most serious problems." Peterson tells us that the "discipline of the marketplace" will accomplish this, or at the very least, get things moving towards this end. But how will this happen? Why should we believe that the invisible hand is good at providing quality in education? Like schoolchildren, we are told to follow a simple analogy: through competition, the marketplace brings out excellence in consumer goods, therefore competition will do the same for schools...
...chronicled the disaster of the charter schools over the past year or so. We have read of an Afrocentric high school in Washington, D.C. that threw a white journalist out of the school, hurling epithets. Elsewhere, a charter school is established to the history of Bayonne, New Jersey. Even Peterson admits that charter schools need to be regulated. So much for the discipline of the marketplace...