The Old School Reformer’s Case for Privatizing Education
30th April 2023
Yglesias mourns the loss of the old consensus. He recognizes the shortcomings of public education as it currently exists, but wants to go back to the reasonable reforms that were being tried out during the Obama administration. In contrast, this essay argues that arguments made for supporting moderate reforms over privatization are weak. This isn’t that hard of a case to make to conservatives, who believe in markets and hate public education already. Yet I would go a step further, and argue that working towards privatization makes sense from a moderate and center-left perspective as well, especially for the kinds of people who still pine for Obama-era reforms and think they weren’t tried hard enough. If you believe in private enterprise at all — if you think, for example, things like restaurants and office supply stores are better left to the market — the arguments for keeping education outside of government control are stronger than in most other areas of life.