For the past 150 years, people have chosen to tax themselves to assure that public schools assist in the process of integrating children into the increasingly complex and demanding economic and political institutions of modern societies. This is not to say that public schools have succeeded in this mission, for clearly, education has not been distributed equally. Public education has, however, helped to weaken the hold of social elites on the distribution of those goods and assured that a broader range of people have become able to participate in the shaping of our common life. Relinquishing this process to market forces is a recipe for intensifying inequity and marginalizing the voices of those without the ability to pay. Mr. Bennett argues that standards and vouchers will provide more opportunities for populations that have been underserved by public schools.
Public education is a work in progress.
It has serious flaws, not the least of which is its tendency to perpetuate inequities in the broader society. Focusing on these flaws and then subjecting schools to market forces are strategies aimed not at improving public education but at supplanting it. This approach will exacerbate the growing rift between rich and poor and move our country even closer to the class-based divisions that once led many of our ancestors to seek out the more economically open and democratic possibilities of North America. The conservatism espoused by William Bennett is aimed not at conserving these possibilities but at conserving the privileges of the few. Heritage Foundation, March 2000.