Thursday, October 14, 2004

Another blogospheric victory 

Craig Westover told me last night that he's been invited to speak at the Minnesota Public Radio event in St. Paul next Monday discussing school choice and Craig's idea for universal tuition tax credits. In a letter to me this morning he elaborates:

Because of the response, I've been given about 5 minutes on the program to introduce the idea for discussion. It's also motivated MPR to invite some charter school people to the discussion. I've attended some of these "open" sessions before, and they are eye-opening -- more for the way they reveal how people in power think, rather than what they think. We're messin' with kids minds here.

So how does a Tuition Tax Credit for K-12 work to close the achievement gap? It creates a stable supply of tuition money and therefore a demand by parents for places to use it. That in turn promotes more competition and niche marketing among existing schools and ultimately creation of new schools to serve underserved markets -- for example, targeting the low performing students.

One of my commenters suggests universal vouchers instead. Which would mess with kids' minds more?

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