Jay Greene had a lot of smart things to say in this Wall Street Journal op-ed, but I found his opening paragraph unpersuasive:
On education policy, appeasement is about as ineffective as it is in foreign affairs. Many proponents of school choice, especially Democrats, have tried to appease teachers unions by limiting their support to charter schools while opposing private school vouchers. They hope that by sacrificing vouchers, the unions will spare charter schools from political destruction.
I challenge Jay to name one person he knows who supports charter schools but opposes vouchers because he or she hopes to appease the unions. I hang out with a lot of these folks and it's clear to me that most of them oppose vouchers either because of queasiness over church/state issues or because they don't want public funds going to schools that don't face any public transparency or accountability requirements. (By the way, maybe our sliding scale??would change their minds on that point.)
But Jay is right about his larger point: charter schools are the true existential threat??to the education establishment, and the unions are acting accordingly.
