This is the latest in our series on school choice and the political left.
It’s amazing how many artifacts of the Voucher Left, but half buried and glinting in the sun, have been missed by so many. But not every potential archeologist has shrugged and walked on.
Writers like Matthew Miller, in this piece for The Atlantic, and Peter Schrag, in this piece for The American Prospect, have accurately characterized the school choice movement in all its eclectic glory. Today, we’d like to pause and highlight the contributions of another.
Adam Emerson was redefinED’s founding editor before moving on to first, a gig as the Fordham Institute’s “school choice czar,” and now, charter schools director at the Florida Department of Education. At the same time he was setting the bar for quality at the blog’s dawn five years ago, Adam was unearthing gems from the sprawling dig that is choice and the left. Among them:
- Democrat Sargent Shriver, one of the architects of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, also had a hand in a federal experiment with school vouchers that began in 1969.
- Democrat George McGovern, the anti-war presidential candidate in 1972, was a true-blue school choice guy until flip-flopping late in life.
- On the campaign trail in 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter told Catholic school leaders he was “committed to finding constitutionally acceptable methods of providing aid to parents whose children attend parochial schools.” Then the NEA endorsed him, driving a transparently political wedge between party and policy that remains to this day.
As we continue our Voucher Left series, it’s only fitting we share Adam’s work with redefinED readers who may have missed it the first time around, or who find, like we do, that it’s well worth reading again. Eventually, we hope, the center-left pillars of choice will be more widely recognized, appreciated and emulated.
When that time comes, we also hope due credit is extended to patient excavators like Adam, who, politely but persistently, wouldn’t let us forget what was right in front of us.
Among his other Voucher Left posts:
- Milton Friedman put vouchers on the ed policy field in 1955. But in the ‘60s and ‘70s, liberal intellectuals and Democratic politicians took the ball and ran with it: “The liberal nature of vouchers? Look to your history”
- Not that long ago, the Democratic and Republican Party platforms didn’t sound all that different when it came to school choice: “How the Democratic Party historically defined equal opportunity in education”
- Some center-left school choice supporters say the best path to equity in education is giving low-income families real power to access more schools: “Equal protection, not equal education”
- Guess which iconic liberal once said, “In the field of education, the public sector is slowly but steadily vanquishing the private”? “An old Democratic voice for a truly public education system”
