School Choice and Market Failure: How Politics Trumps Economics in Education and Elsewhere

This essay traces the roots of the equity approach to school choice to the work of Coons & Sugarman, which began as an outgrowth of their involvement with the landmark California school finance case, Serrano v. Priest (1971). Comparing the equity approach to the market model espoused by Milton Friedman, the author argues that the former is potentially more aligned with the redistributive public agenda he supports. Drawing lessons from the recent meltdown of the American economy, he further argues that the implementation of a true market approach in education is highly improbable, and that since markets are incapable of self-correction, government intervention is required to address the resulting distress when markets fail. This is not to say that the political process has been responsive to the educational needs of the most disadvantaged students either. It has produced a public school system that provides more resources to the advantaged than the disadvantaged; and the artificial limits it imposes on voucher and charter programs has resulted in a system of education by chance rather than a system of education by choice.