Panel praises free-market education choices
Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008
CONWAY — Free-market ideas are beginning to open Arkansas public schools up to competition, a panel of professors told an audience of University of Central Arkansas students Wednesday afternoon.
But the new options that families have because of charter schools and school choice aren’t enough, Loyola University economics professor Walter Block said. He thinks the free market would provide an education for all and public schools should be abolished.
“This idea that you need only public schools or only the aristocracy is going to get educated is erroneous,” he said. “To me there are two parts of equity and one is not forcing people to pay for other people’s education. That seems more like theft than equity.”
The panel was hosted by the public university and the Arkansas Policy Foundation, a Little Rock think tank that focuses on tax policy and education. Some 270 students and professors attended the panel.
The other panelists were UCA professor Roy Whitehead, who teaches business law, and UCA President Lu Hardin, who has previously served as the director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education and as a state senator.
Block, who previously taught economics at UCA, advocated for the privatization of public schools from elementary through college. He said the public system isn’t moral because it requires childless people or people with children outside the public school system to pay for the education of others. He said private schools are also more efficient because they have more incentive to be efficient and to specialize in order to attract more students.
An all-private schooling system wouldn’t have to resolve issues like teen pregnancy and culture-specific curricula in every school because individual schools would become special- ized enough to deal with a variety of issues, Block said.
“If you had private schooling, different schools would find different choices on these issues and different people could be satisfied,” he said. “Just like we have many types of cars and many kinds of shirts, if you have a one-size-fits-all, you don’t satisfy consumers.”
A handful of students voiced objections to Block’s ideas, including Tasha Baker, a junior education major.
She said she owes her education to public schools; her parents were too poor to pay for private school tuition.
“Because of my intellect, I was able to get scholarships based on taxes,” Baker said. “If that system was not in place for me, I would not be where I am today.”
Block said a private system would also have scholarships provided by charitable organizations and foundations. He also said people shouldn’t hold public education beyond reproach.
“I’m not attacking goodness. [Public education ] is not good,” he said. “We shouldn’t be calling it public education; we should be calling it socialist education.”
Whitehead gave an overview of changes in education policy in Arkansas since the tiny Lake View School District in Phillips County sued the state in 1992 over disparities in funding public schools.
The ensuing changes in policies created more equitable curricula, facilities and financing in public schools, he said. Other changes, including school choice and creation of charter schools, gave families more choices in which schools they could attend, he said.
Seven new charter schools are scheduled to open this fall in Arkansas, bringing the total in the state to 17 conversion and open-enrollment charter schools.
Open enrollment schools are operated by nonprofit organizations other than school districts and conversion charter schools are run by traditional school systems.
Charter schools are public schools operated according to the terms of a contract with the state Board of Education and are exempt from some of the laws and rules that govern traditional public schools. In return for the flexibility, the charter schools are held to stricter standards for student achievement.
Hardin said charter schools are uniquely able to cut through the red tape of the state education system.
“I am not a fan of the bureaucracy that is choking our good, competent teachers,” said Hardin, who prefaced his comments with the declaration that he’s a “passionate defender and advocate” of public education.
Charter schools are not ultimately responsible to state employees, but to parents who have the choice where to send their children to be educated, he said.
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