A Democrat for School Choice

Yes, a pro-school choice Democrat. Former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist explains his support for Vouchers in Front Page Magazine. Excerpts after the jump.

Q: Do you like vouchers because the idea of choice and competition naturally appeals to you or because you’ve seen the program work in Milwaukee?

A: I was for vouchers before we established them in Milwaukee. The reason it appeals to me is that it’s good for the city, the parents and the kids to have more choices available. Under the old system, before the vouchers, people would shop for school districts. If they had resources, they would tend to move to the school district that was most likely to have the best situation for their kid, which unfortunately often meant moving away from people that were low income.

Q: I’ve always said the best way for Pittsburgh to reverse its incredible population drain, which is leading the country, is to blow up its public schools and give a $10,000 voucher to anyone who wants to go to school in the city and see what happens. You’d have more people pouring into the city than you could handle.

A: You would. I wouldn’t blow up the public schools. The Milwaukee public schools have improved because of choice and I also think the Catholic schools and Lutheran schools (there are 22 Lutheran schools in the city) have had to get better. At first, the Catholics had the idea that, “Oh, our education is so great. Now kids have vouchers and they’ll come flocking to our schools.” Well, they did at first — but not uncritically. If parents aren’t getting what they want out of Catholic school, they’ll go public, they’ll go Lutheran, they’ll go private nonreligious. They’ll go where they want to go.

It’s interesting the way privates have had to get better at their game under this system. And there are public schools that are really good and the system now has a reason to create more of those opportunities. The numbers on achievement cores have not been dramatic; it’s been slightly better for both public schools and the privates. But the parents love it. They love the system. They have much more control over finding what they want. It would really help Pittsburgh to do this.

Read the whole thing, it’s a great interview.