Why does the Left oppose school choice?

It can’t be because they oppose tax dollars going to private, even faith-based institutions. For decades, state and federal subsidies have flowed to private colleges and universities, including sectarian institutions. For decades, Medicare and Medicaid dollars have flowed to Catholic hospitals. For decades, federal block grants and social-service dollars have flowed to private agencies and nonprofits, including those with religious affiliations.

Here in North Carolina, liberals love to sing the praises of Smart Start, the signature program of former Gov. Jim Hunt, and North Carolina Pre-K, the signature program of former Gov. Mike Easley. Both preschool programs fund private institutions, without substantial objection by the Left. In fact, during the initial legislative debate in the mid-1990s about creating Smart Start, conservatives expressed concern that the new program would unfairly exclude church-run day care centers, thus using government subsidies to bias the market. Hunt addressed the concern by ensuring that, yes, church-run centers would be full participants in Smart Start without having to give up their principles. Famously, Smart Start recipients would be assured that if they want to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in their classes, that would be just fine with the state.

In other words, the objection that North Carolina’s new opportunity-scholarship program breaches a necessary wall between government funding of services and private provision of those services is incoherent.

So is the argument that North Carolina taxpayers who don’t agree with the curriculum or teaching methods of private schools shouldn’t be compelled to fund them. Is that really a policy they would apply consistently to other programs and institutions?

I, for one, am appalled at some of the propaganda and garbage I am compelled to fund at state-run colleges and universities. When I was an undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1980s, I had a number of excellent, fair-minded professors whose personal views differed from mine but who didn’t let that interfere with their responsibilities as educators. But I also had several professors of the stereotypical sort — those who attempted to use their power in the classroom to indoctrinate their students with Marxist ideology, Keynesian claptrap, and radical social theories of varying levels of ludicrousness.

This problem hasn’t gotten any better since the 1980s. As best I can judge from talking to today’s campus generation, the problem has gotten worse.

If liberals think North Carolina shouldn’t compel taxpayers to fund a K-12 voucher program because it might finance the teaching of content they find objectionable, would they accept the same argument as a justification for defunding the UNC system, or at least for imposing restrictions on what UNC professors are allowed to teach? Of course not. That’s why their second objection to school choice, that it may subsidize instructional content some find objectionable, is also incoherent.

What is the real reason why modern leftists oppose school choice? Because they take their lead on the issue from teacher unions, who see the expansion of chartered public schools, private schools, and other educational options as a competitive threat. Keep in mind that most teachers do not belong to the North Carolina Association of Educators or similar organizations. Very few charter school teachers do. No private school teachers do, as far as I know. And even most teachers in district-run public schools are not NCAE members.

The concepts of differentiation and competition run counter to the union mentality. But they are critical to the way virtually all other professions function. Attorneys compete with other attorneys and receive compensation that varies by practice, location, and performance. Physicians and nurses compete with other providers, either as independent practices or as members of hospital networks. Engineers compete with other engineers for jobs, contracts, and pay.

Even in the public sector, competition is usually welcomed. We typically want sole-source contracts to be rare exceptions, not the rule. We take great pains to encourage multiple bidders for performing public services.

Providing a spectrum of educational choices — district-run public schools, charter schools, private schools, and other options — is a commonsense policy with plenty of precedent in America and around the world. That the Left opposes it is disappointing, but hardly puzzling.

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Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.