Abstract
For contrast, this chapter focuses on several school choice proposals from the 1960s and 1970s that were not motivated by market libertarianism. Theodore Sizer (1932–2009) favored markets in education from the belief that they’d enhance equity, preserve diversity, and keep schools under the control of those within them. John “Jack” Coons (1929–) and Stephen Sugarman (1942–) created a school choice plan they believed would fund education more equitably than existing public school plans. John Holt (1923–1985) favored school choice as a way to lessen the cultural grip of conventional schooling and open the way for alternative vehicles for education. In each of these plans, governments would have several roles beyond what market libertarians would assign.
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Notes
- 1.
John E. Coons, “Give Us Liberty and Give Us Depth,” in Liberty & Learning: Milton Friedman’s Voucher Idea at Fifty, ed. Robert Enlow and Lenore T. Ealy (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2006), 63.
- 2.
See, for instance, Molly Townes O’Brien, “Private School Tuition Vouchers and the Realities of Racial Politics,” Tennessee Law Review 64 (1996): 359–98; Jim Carl, Freedom of Choice : Vouchers in American Education (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011).
- 3.
For a more comprehensive overview of the history of progressive support for school choice, see: James Forman, “The Secret History of School Choice: How Progressives Got There First,” Georgetown Law Journal 93, no. 4 (2005).
- 4.
Theodore Sizer and Phillip Whitten, “A Proposal for a Poor Children’s Bill of Rights,” Psychology Today, August 1968, 59.
- 5.
Sizer and Whitten, “A Proposal for a Poor Children’s Bill of Rights,” 61.
- 6.
Sizer and Whitten, “A Proposal for a Poor Children’s Bill of Rights,” 59.
- 7.
Sizer and Whitten, “A Proposal for a Poor Children’s Bill of Rights,” 60.
- 8.
Sizer and Whitten, “A Proposal for a Poor Children’s Bill of Rights,” 61.
- 9.
Sizer and Whitten, “A Proposal for a Poor Children’s Bill of Rights,” 62.
- 10.
Sizer and Whitten, “A Proposal for a Poor Children’s Bill of Rights,” 6.
- 11.
Theodore Sizer, “The Academies: An Interpretation,” in The Age of the Academy, 1–49 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1964), 2.
- 12.
Sizer, “The Academies,” 3.
- 13.
John O’Neil, “On Lasting School Reform: A Conversation with Ted Sizer,” Educational Leadership (February 1995): 4–9, 6.
- 14.
O’Neil, “Lasting School Reform,” 4.
- 15.
O’Neil, “Lasting School Reform,” 7.
- 16.
O’Neil, “Lasting School Reform,” 7.
- 17.
Theodore Sizer, “Education and Assimilation: A Fresh Plea for Pluralism,” Phi Delta Kappan 58, no. 1 (1976): 31–35, 34.
- 18.
Sizer, “Education and Assimilation,” 34.
- 19.
Sizer, “Education and Assimilation,” 35.
- 20.
“We should reward the best schools, and we should shut down or redesign those that fail, and especially those that are unsafe. That’s one reason why I have supported expanding school choice and charter schools-creative new schools started by parents and teachers and licensed by school systems.” Bill Clinton, Between Hope and History: Meeting America’s Challenges for the Twentieth Century (New York: Crown, 1996), 44.
- 21.
Theodore Sizer, Horace’s Hope: What Works for the American High School (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 40.
- 22.
Deborah Meier, “Choice Can Save Public Education,” The Nation, March 4, 1991, 253–71, 266.
- 23.
Meier, “Choice Can Save Public Education,” 271.
- 24.
Meier, “Choice Can Save Public Education,” 271.
- 25.
Deborah Meier, “What Happens to Public Education Deferred,” in These Schools Belong to You and Me: Why We Can’t Afford to Examine Our Public Schools (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2017), 139.
- 26.
Meier, “What Happens to Public Education Deferred,” 151.
- 27.
Martin Meeker, Jack Coons: Law, Ethics, and Educational Finance Reform (Oral History Center, Bancroft Library, University of California, 2015), 89, http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/coons_jack_2016.pdf.
- 28.
John E. Coons, William H. Klune III, and Stephen D. Sugarman, Private Wealth and Public Education (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1970), 202.
- 29.
Hershel Shanks and William H. Clune, Review of Private Wealth and Public Education, by John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Harvard Law Review 84, no. 1 (1970): 259–60, https://doi.org/10.2307/1339586.
- 30.
Klune Coons and Sugarman, Private Wealth and Public Education, 16.
- 31.
Raymond L. Sullivan, Serrano v. Priest , No. L.A. 29820 (California Supreme Court August 30, 1971).
- 32.
Klune Coons and Sugarman, Private Wealth and Public Education, 259.
- 33.
John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 198.
- 34.
Meeker, Jack Coons: Law, Ethics, and Educational Finance Reform, 55.
- 35.
Coons and Sugarman, Education by Choice, 195.
- 36.
Coons and Sugarman, Education by Choice, 21–22.
- 37.
Coons and Sugarman, Education by Choice, 191.
- 38.
Coons and Sugarman, Education by Choice, 149.
- 39.
Coons and Sugarman, Education by Choice, 148.
- 40.
Raymond L. Sullivan, Serrano v. Priest , No. 557 P. 2d 929 (California Supreme Court, December 30, 1976).
- 41.
Ron Matus, “California Dreamin’: How the Left Almost Pulled off School Choice Revolution,” redefinED, December 16, 2015, https://www.redefinedonline.org/2015/12/how-the-left-almost-pulled-off-school-choice-revolution/.
- 42.
Meeker, “Jack Coons,” 123.
- 43.
Meeker, “Jack Coons,” 123.
- 44.
Meeker, “Jack Coons,” 123.
- 45.
John Holt, Freedom and Beyond (New York: Dutton, 1972), 117.
- 46.
Mel Allen, “The Education of John Holt,” Yankee Magazine, December 1981; Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 123–24.
- 47.
John Holt, “Not So Golden Rule Days,” in The Under-Achieving School (New York: Pitman, 1969), 71.
- 48.
John Holt, What Do I Do Monday? (New York: Dutton, 1970), 299.
- 49.
Holt, What Do I Do Monday? 265.
- 50.
John Caldwell Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better (New York: Dutton, 1976), 192.
- 51.
Holt, Instead of Education, 197.
- 52.
Holt, Instead of Education, 196.
- 53.
Holt, What Do I Do Monday? 229.
- 54.
Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 127.
- 55.
John Holt, Escape from Childhood (New York: Dutton, 1974).
- 56.
Jeff Riggenbach, “Convention Diary 1978,” Libertarian Review 7, no. 9 (October 1978): 31.
- 57.
“The Crisis in Schooling: An LR Colloquium,” Libertarian Review 7, no. 11 (December 1978): 25–28, 27.
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Currie-Knight, K. (2019). “Other Conceptions, Both Powerful and Exotic”: School Choice Visions from Voices from the Political Left. In: Education in the Marketplace. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11778-8_8
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