Cambridge Experience Shows School Choice Works

To the editors:

There is a certain irony in the fact, reported by The Crimson, that the Cambridge public school system is now desperately scrambling to overhaul its educational programs in an effort to halt the exodus of students to private schools (News, Sept. 29). The situation in Cambridge nicely illustrates a bit of reasoning that might seem self-evident, if not for its potential ramifications--namely, that public schools are forced to improve when they find themselves competing with private schools for enrollment. The irony is that this is, of course, the crucial argument in favor of school vouchers.

It goes without saying that the very idea of vouchers is anathema to a city which has yet to come to grips with the failure of progressive social experiments like rent control and Communism. But it is, perhaps, the best practical method so far conceived to advance equality in educational opportunity for all children--something that Cambridge should keep in mind as it struggles to provide for both the new urban elite, who have many choices and the old urban poor, who have few.

Those aghast at this suggestion might console themselves by considering the words of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in Article 26 nobly declares: "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."

Kevin A. Shapiro '00

Sept. 30, 1999

The writer is a former editor of the Salient.