We Shouldn ’t Need to Use Science to Grant Educational Freedom

This is getting old. I find myselfcorrecting false claims regarding the scientific evidence on private school choice all too often. For example, usingonly one correlational study that did not detect any statistically significant effects, Valerie Strauss recently concluded that “private schools aren ’t better at educating kids than public schools” in theWashington Post. As I have pointed out many times before, thepreponderance of the causal evidence indicates that school voucher programs in the U.S. improve student test scores and more important outcomes such as high school graduation, college enrollment, andtolerance of others.But science shouldn ’t determine whether families are allowed to pick the schools they want for their kids.Just imagine if we used the scientific evidence to decide whether people should be residentially assigned to their nearest government grocery store. What if we randomly assigned thousands of families to government-run grocery stores and found that, on average, those families consumed fewer calories than the families with the freedom to shop for groceries on their own? Such an empirical finding certainly wouldn ’t mean that the government should compel all individual families to accept the grocery basket deemed ideal by the experts. After all, a crude metric such as caloric intake can only tell us so much about how well an individual’s nutritional needs are being met. And, of course, some people may si mply value eating appetizing foods ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs