Utah's Schools Showdown

Kudos to George Will for nailing the issues surrounding the Utah Parent Choice in Education Act right on the head:

Intellectually bankrupt but flush with cash, the teachers unions continue to push their threadbare arguments, undeterred by the fact that Utah's vouchers will increase per-pupil spending and will lower class sizes in public schools. Why the perverse perseverance? There are two large, banal reasons -- fear of competition and desire for the maximum number of dues-paying public school teachers.
 
Although Utah is among the reddest of states -- the most  emphatically Republican in six of the past eight presidential elections -- it is among the most supportive states regarding public education: It has the fifth-highest proportion of K-through-12 students in public schools. (Even its  home-schooled children outnumber the children in private schools.)  Nevertheless, on Tuesday, Utah voters can strike a reverberating blow against the idea that education should remain the most important sector of American life shielded from the improving force of competition.

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Utah's Schools Showdown

By George F. Will
Thursday, November 1, 2007; A21

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/AR2007103102549_pf.html

In today's political taxonomy, "progressives" are rebranded liberals dodging the damage they did to their old label. Perhaps their most injurious idea -- injurious to themselves and public schools -- was the forced busing of (mostly other people's) children to engineer "racial balance" in public schools. Soon, liberals will need a third label if people notice what "progressives" are up to in Utah.