Building a Competitive Education Industry
A Weekly Column by Myron Lieberman

The following letter to the editor from Myron Lieberman was published by the Phi Delta Kappan, January 2002, in "Backtalk," pages 419-420. Today, Dr. Lieberman responds to the authors.

In a column posted at www.educationpolicy.org, I tried to make the point that the issue of competence is frequently ignored in controversies over academic freedom. As luck would have it, my mail recently included an issue of the Kappan that highlights the neglect of issues of competence in controversies over school choice. I refer to "A Case Study of School Choice, " by Kenneth Howe, Margaret Eisenhart, and Damian Betebenner (October, 2001). The article purports to show that a school choice plan that has been operating in the Boulder Valley (Colorado) School District (BVSD) since 1961 resulted in ethnic and economic stratification and only the "most modest and equivocal gains for participating students." The authors conclude that their Study shows that school choice is at best a marginal reform. What the article really shows, however, is the incompetence of the authors to discuss school choice issues -and it does so even if every one of their conclusions about the effects of BVSD's school choice plan is correct.

Let me begin with a few comments that command universal agreement among competent writers on the subject. One is that "school choice" is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of specific plans. For example, school choice plans differ on what kinds of school choices are available, which students (or parents) can exercise choice, the arrangements governing the impact of choice on sending and receiving schools, the funding for transportation, the availability of classroom space in schools of choice, whether vouchers are part of the school choice plan, the amount of any voucher -- the list of differences in both theory and practice could go on and on.

Because these differences can affect the outcomes, it is essential to avoid generalizations about "school choice" that apply only to specific versions of it. I do not claim that every difference among school choice plans is always critical; some are, and some are not, depending on context.

I add one critical additional point. The idea that competition would improve education first received scholarly attention in 1956 and 1962 as a result of publications by Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate economist. However, as Friedman and many other economists have repeatedly pointed out, certain conditions are essential to allow competition to materialize. There must be ease of producer entry into the market, and consumers must have freedom of choice to switch to different service providers if they wish to do so. Information about prices is necessary to enable producers and consumers to make intelligent decisions about costs and benefits. Furthermore, no producer or consumer must be able to control the market.

With these Economics 101 considerations in mind, let me review what Howe, Eisenhart, and Betebenner have done. Essentially, they have cited the results of "school choice" offered by a public monopoly as evidence that a competitive education industry would have dire consequences without any redeeming features. In my opinion, to regard the outcomes of choices offered by a government monopoly as evidence of the outcomes of school choice in competitive markets demonstrates incompetence. Sad to say, some, perhaps most, of the proponents of "school choice" also fail to understand this point.

Although no additional evidence on incompetence is needed, the evidence of bias in the article is as solid as the evidence of incompetence. The 19 footnotes included in the article cite publications by Alex Molnar, Martin Carnoy, Amy Stuart Wells, and other longtime warriors in the jihad against a competitive education system. In contrast, the references do not include a single publication on the same issues by advocates of a competitive education system, such as Andrew Coulson, Milton Friedman, or John Merrifield.

And this brings me to a basic issue concerning the Kappan. The Kappan is an avowed opponent of a competitive education industry. In recent years, it has repeatedly published professionally pathetic articles, such as the one under discussion, in an effort to defend the public school monopoly. It has every right to do so, but such an editorial policy undermines the Kappan's claims to be a "professional" journal. In theory at least, a professional journal tries to bring the best evidence and analyses to the points in dispute. In contrast, the Kappan is a propaganda arm of the public school lobby. Nothing evil in that, but there is a world of difference between a journal whose raison d'etre is to support an interest group and a journal intended to provide readers with the most competent analyses of controversial issues.

Myron Lieberman, chairman, Education Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.

The Authors Respond

Myron Lieberman' s foaming ad hominems against us, against other researchers, and against the Kappan certainly do not merit a response. And so we'll give him none. Otherwise, he criticizes us for not writing a different article, one that would have examined the comparative advantages of private and public school choice in Lieberman's imaginary world where the market gods are always there to save us.

The article we did write examines how the market gods behave (or misbehave) when they are tested in the real world of education policy. Lieberman makes few references to our actual findings or their warrant, and he attributes one conclusion to us that we did not draw. We did not say that the BVSD choice system produced only the "most modest and equivocal gains for participating students." This is a claim about research on vouchers. We didn't even investigate the question of gains for individual students in our Study. Our unit of analysis was schools; we found that some benefited significantly, whereas others were significantly harmed.

Lieberman says that "'school choice' is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of specific plans." At the same time, he wants to write off our Study as having nothing to say about the merits of school choice. Well, he can't have it both ways. Our study speaks directly to a number of controversies surrounding public school choice -- controversies about skimming, stratification, and unequal opportunities for parents. And public school choice is the variety of choice that occupies the most space under the school choice umbrella by far. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that our findings can't be extended to purer forms of market-driven school choice of the kind that Lieberman would apparently advocate. At least, Lieberman has not offered any such reason.

Kenneth Howe, Margaret Eisenhart; and Damian Betebenner

Myron Lieberman Response to the Authors' Response, January 21, 2002

If there were any doubt that Howe et al lack competence on school choice issues, their response to my letter eliminates it. In fact, the first paragraph in their response is sufficient to draw this conclusion. It was surprising that they would assert that the outcomes in BVSD are useful as a guide to school choice when, unlike the plan in BVSD:

• There are no major regulatory barriers to producer entry that do not apply to all schools,
• Nonprofit and for profit schools receive at least half the financial support per pupil as government schools,
• Producers achieve market share only as it is achieved through parent choices,
• A competitive education industry has to demonstrate its superiority to the government monopoly, but has a reasonable time to do this.

It is astonishing that Howe et al would reiterate their belief that "public school choice" is a reliable guide to developments in a market system of education. That is like saying that developments in the Soviet carmaking system would have been a reliable guide to what would happen under free enterprise. At any rate, if Howe et al can find a copy of my book entitled Public School Choice (Myron Lieberman, Public School Choice, Lancaster, PA: Technomic Publishing Co., 1999) they will find more and better reasons to be critical of it.

Myron Lieberman