Some parents will pick bad schools, but surely that is better than letting bad schools pick parents. Another study, reported in The Public Interest, finds that choice not only improves schools but strengthens parents' ties to them. Maybe, but in the District of Columbia, now is not the time to worry about preserving the integrity of private education. What baffles me most about vouchers is liberals' resistance to them, a fact which reflects more poorly on liberalism than any other fact I know. The case for school vouchers is the classic case of consumers against monopolies, the case that Ralph Nader and the Consumers Union taught us all in the 1970s.
Vouchers are also a classic opportunity to equalize opportunity.
No one, of course, expects the Democrats to reverse their position on school choice overnight. That is not how politics works. What is disturbing, though, is their adamant refusal even to entertain the idea. In a political movement or party, real corruption, as opposed to the pettifogging kind, comes when the leaders place the interests of politicians and public-service providers over the interests of their constituents, especially their poorest and weakest constituents. Now is a moment, one might add, when the Democratic Party could do with looking a little less corrupt.