Suburbs and School Reform

Real Clear Policy has an editorial here blaming the suburbs for the difficulty in getting the authors idea of educational reform (vouchers and charter schools) enacted.

Mr. Lawler states that the “leafy suburbs” opposition to his ideas of reform (mostly charter schools and vouchers) is  “motivated by the most powerful of kitchen table issues, one that is tangled up in childrearing, real estate, race, and crime.”

Really?  Perhaps it’s that better-educated suburban residents are aware that the jury is still very much out on whether charters and vouchers actually improve education.  And—just perhaps—they may have this American hang-up that they want to control their own schools, rather than turning control over to a charter or private school board.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill,  local control of schools is the worst form of school management except for everything else.

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