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The King of Stuff welcomes school-choice guru Dr. Matthew Ladner of the Arizona Charter School Association and Executive Editor of the weblog RedefinED. Previously Ladner served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Koch Institute and Senior Advisor for Research and Policy at Excel in Ed and Vice President of Research and Goldwater Institute. We talk about Arizona’s epic improvements in education, thanks to school choice.
Then Jon goes for a news wrap-up on inflation, SCOTUS abortion fallout, and more! Subscribe to the King of Stuff Spotify playlist featuring picks from the show. This week, Jon recommends “My Echo” by Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever.
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Thanks. Choice works. Top down doesn’t. That’s why free markets work better than socialism. Top down started with concerned parents and it was positive but not run by the state or unions, but it evolved, (or rotted) as teachers unions formed and became powerful. We need public funding and support as we want the poor, the brilliant, and the less talented to be able to reach what ever is appropriate. The top can’t do that but individual choice can, but it’s not automatic. Suggest the author check out New Zealand as they went from a centralized system that provided some of the worst schooling in the west to a completely decentralized free choice system that in one year became the best schooling in the west. They did away with all centralized educational bureaucracy, turned schools over to teachers, which meant parents because parents could choose any school in the country, so good teachers took over, got rid of lousy teachers (interesting all seemed to know who were good and not good) What’s interesting in the cases discussed in the podcast is that folks have different interests and talents and choice provides options for them. I’d suggest that states, including Arizona, better do away with any union control. Unions may make adjustments to survive but will get support from the rest of the nation and are not positive. Get rid of them as soon as possible. In New Zealand it was automatic as there was no centralized control at all. Of course there will be some schools that fail, that is the nature of competition and choice.