Public school: good enough for the public

As a follow up to an earlier post on school choice hypocrisy, a study released by the Thomas Fordham Institute shows that urban public school teachers are more likely to enroll their children in private schools than the general public.

In Obama's hometown of Chicago, the study found that 38.6% of public school teachers sent their kids to private schools as compared to 22.6% of the general public. In fact, across America, public school teachers enroll their children in private schools at twice the rate of the general public - 22% to 10%.

Mark J. Perry at Carpe Diem makes this connection:

Employees at Health Clinic X and their families are offered medical care at no additional cost as a benefit and yet most employees of Clinic X pay out-of-pocket for medical services at Clinic Y.

The NEA itself has gone so far as to label school voucher bills as "misleading" and refer to private schools as "unaccountable" and unable to meet "highly qualified standards". All the while, their own employees are more than willing to roll the dice and place their own children out of reach out the "highly qualified standards" set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act.

The NEA's assault on school choice for parents continues with these two gems:

• A voucher lottery is a terrible way to determine access to an education. True equity means the ability for every child to attend a good school in the neighborhood.

And if there are no good schools in the neighborhood? Should all children be allowed to fail equally at underperforming schools?

With this quote, the NEA seems to believe that education is a zero sum game. This kind of thinking pervades liberal ideology (taxing the rich, Affirmative Action, etc.), under the misguided notion that one person's success is directly related to someone else's failure.

• Vouchers were not designed to help low-income children. Milton Friedman, the "grandfather" of vouchers, dismissed the notion that vouchers could help low-income families, saying "it is essential that no conditions be attached to the acceptance of vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment."

At this point, the NEA decides to use a direct quote from Friedman as damning evidence, when in fact, it makes a completely opposite point. Friedman was trying to ensure that the voucher situation would not help only one set of people: poor, rich, black, white, urban, suburban. No conditions means the freedom for any parent to make the best choice for their child's education.

If public school teachers don't use public schools, why should you?