School choice offers chance, not distraction

The editorial Monday by The (Columbia) State provides classic leadership toward 50 more years of misery for South Carolina schools.

Education bureaucrats, union officials and some ideologues would like you to continue to imagine that the problem is money and the "distracting" notion of freedom of choice.

The strangulation of the private option for grade schools prevents healthy competition that would offer teachers better working conditions and students better education and academic morale, in both public and private schools, for less money. This has been demonstrated in the choice programs that have been permitted in the U.S. and more highly developed programs in Sweden and elsewhere.

The idea of school choice will not go away. If the intellectuals at The State never engage in honest dialogue about it, sadly, their children might have to. But sooner than that, President Barack Obama's exciting education secretary, Arne Duncan, might shake them out of their shoes.

James T. Quattlebaum

Beaufort