Promoting School Choice the Wrong Way
A prominent advocate of this worthy cause has done it a disservice by exploiting right-wing rage to advance it
Dear Readers:
The culture war is being fought on multiple fronts, but arguably none has generated as much rage on the far right as schools. Critical race theory, gender-inclusive policies, trans issues, and Covid-related closures have fueled a moral panic that is poisoning our politics.
One prominent school choice advocate, Corey DeAngelis, frustrated by the slow pace of education reform, decided to go “rogue” and exploit this rage and panic to advance his cause. He became a right-wing hero. But, recently, due to an exposé of his youthful indiscretions, he fell from grace with his new allies—even as he had squandered the goodwill of his previous ones.
My latest video tells the story of his contrasting strategies to promote school choice to highlight why choosing the right means to promote the right ends is important. It's a story we should all internalize, especially in the age of shifting coalitions and alliances, as we strive to maintain and cultivate a more open, free, and liberal society.
You can watch it below or at our YouTube channel, and after you do, let us know in the comments: What are some of the other issues that you feel have been tainted by the means used to advance them?
Senior Producer,
Landry Ayres
© The UnPopulist, 2024
The obvious ones that are tainted by hysteria and extremists are immigration, police reform and common sense gun control and you can throw in the proper way to address climate change without crippling our economy or layering on overdone regulations.
Conceptually I agree with some level of school choice but my concern is we are going to offer vouchers to parents who want to send their kids to private school. Inevitably with tuition being subsidized these schools will only continue to raise the cost of tuition ala the way colleges have the last 20 years. Government subsidies will not be able keep up with these prices so the vouchers will only cover a portion of the tuition and there is a large segment in our population that can’t afford to pay ANYTHING toward k-12 school. That means poor people will have to send their kids to public school that will be gutted because they have no money to work with, and thus the educational and economic divide in this country will only accelerate which is rapidly approaching an unsustainable situation.
So maybe I’m not fully grasping the plan. Like I said I’m conceptually in favor of choice, but only if this doesn’t leave the less well off in our society to fall further behind.
For many years, libertarians & conservatives tried and failed to implement school-choice reforms in many states. Then, Corey DeAngelis succeeded in getting school-choice reforms passed in many states. It appears that his approach to getting GOP legislators to pass school choice reform was literally the only way of doing it that succeeded. If you can't point to any successful alternative, then you can't claim he did it the "wrong" way, especially when you have no public-policy achievements of your own. I have drafted a few state code sections and CFR sections. Have you ever drafted any, or gotten any laws enacted? If you haven't, what basis do you have to criticize him? It is worth noting that critical race theory was not criticized only by conservatives, but also libertarian think-tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, well over a decade ago.