MYTHS ABOUT SCHOOL CHOICE
The American Enterprise - "BY Andrews, Lewis [6/1/2005]

"Public-school teacher unions and other opponents of school choice have repeated certain falsehoods over and over to discourage the adoption of a competitive educational system.

One claim is that allowing parents to choose their children's schools would result in racial segregation. Hard evidence suggests the opposite: Private and parochial schools tend to be less racially stratified than many public schools. The schools run by the Evangelical Lutheran Church, to take one example, report that 32 percent of their students are black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American.

There is also compelling evidence that some kinds of non-government schools create a healthier racial environment than do public schools. When the Manhattan Institute's lay Greene compared the lunchroom behavior of students in public and parochial schools, he found that blacks and whites in the latter were much more likely to sit together and genuinely enjoy each others' company. The reason, Greene found, is that children attending religious schools are attracted to each other by interests and beliefs, not skin color.

Another popular objection is that school choice diminishes the quality of education for children who remain in the public system. Harvard's Paul Peterson and other academics found that experimental school choice programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida have benefited all students--those who move to private schools, and those who stay in the public schools, now forced to compete.

"If the public school system were much more open to competition and less a job protection system, you would see a significant number of non-Catholic parochial and private schools develop," states former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. "You would see many of the Protestant denominations develop parochial schools that would attach to their churches. And you would see private groups putting together schools."

That would be good news for U.S. children, parents, and prosperity--under threat from our chronically underperforming government-run schools. "

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