The school choice movement has gained political momentum in recent years, with programs having been established in Milwaukee, Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. But today’s programs are nothing like the "free market in education" proposed four decades ago by the early proponents of school choice.
Economist John Merrifield shows that the "school choice" movement has become mired in false alternatives, petty distinctions, and diminished vision. Yet, he argues that programs providing real educational choices must not be allowed to fail like so many government programs—a freely competitive market for education must remain the ultimate goal. School Choices: True and False charts a course for the achievement of this goal.
“Professor Merrifield asks this question: what is meant by and what is the intended consequence of reforms bearing such labels as vouchers, school choice, charter schools, privatization, and competition? This book brilliantly and clearly exposes the superficiality and extraordinary fuzziness of those labels.”
“In School Choices, Merrifield has produced a scholarly call-to-arms...deserves serious consideration by the strategists of the choice movement.”
“It is always important to subject movements to re-evaluation, so School Choices: True and False is a useful publication . . . This monograph reminds us of the ultimate goal, which is universal choice. This is a valuable contribution.”
“Creating an authentic market is one necessary condition of ending the servitude of the working class and the poor to the government schools. . . . As Professor Merrifield well knows, the integrity of the family and its contractual authority over curriculum and method are foundational objects that will require prudence in selection of policy measures. So understood and domesticated, his book, School Choices, is an important and very timely contribution.”
