But it doesn t tell us why choice shouldn t extend to all families. Or the privately funded programs in Cleveland, New York and Washington, D.C., which, a Harvard University study has shown, produce far more achievement than the public school system. Embracing choice could save jobs for some of them. School choice enjoys support across the political spectrum because study after study shows choice and voucher programs work. What the unions refuse to understand is that school choice helps public schools.
Competition spurs improvement.
And the voucher option does not take the best and brightest from the public schools. It s time for the teachers unions to stop denying poor children who attend poor schools the same opportunity their members children enjoy. It s not a question of radical groups getting control of government money or a church-state argument. Choice advocates favor more scrutiny, more testing, more accountability. It s not a question of money, either.