Could School Choice Help Prevent the Next Baltimore Riot?

As I was flipping channels on Sunday morning, watching the various Sunday Morning News Programs, there was a lot of discussion, naturally, on the Baltimore Riots.

Everyone on This Week with George Stephanopoulos was talking about it. 

Face the nation had a panel talking about it.

It seemed that everyone had issues they believed contributed to the problems in the Baltimore area.  Poverty, concentrated poverty, income inequality, and a lack of jobs was a recurring explanation.  The police need more training.  The police need more psychological training was one line of thought.

One guest even blamed a lack of neighborhood grocery stores and a deficient transportation system.

 

Whaaaat?

Nobody talked about individual choices, personal responsibility, the disintegration of the Nuclear Family, Skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birthrates in most large urban communities, or the long rap-sheet of drug charges Freddie Gray had.  Nope, no conversation about any of that—those are taboo subjects on the Sunday morning shows.   It was just a lot of gushy, idealistic drivel about how when people make bad choices, it is everyone else’s fault; the government is actually at fault--and must install and pay for more “programs” at once!

And then several panelists mentioned poor education as an issue.

Bill Kristol piped up after the Bernie Sanders Interview and threw out a gem, that nobody touched

and everyone else on the panel ignored and quickly moved away from. 

School Choice. 

Offer School Choice to students in places like Baltimore, make the schools compete for better academic outcomes, and let kids and parents that want to escape a failing school—actually let them do this!  

He’s right, school choice is the civil rights issue of our times, and school choice is what will eventually save the American public school system.

But Liberals do not want it.  And that is Final!! 

Here is what Kristol said:

“A populist moment in the sense that people, middle class working class Americans would like to see policies that help them more. But so fine. Let's have school -- I mean, the single best thing what to do for poor kids in Baltimore or anywhere else is have more choice of schools, more competition among schools. In New York there are terrific charter schools attempts, which Bill de Blasio, this hero of the Left, is trying to shut down. There have been much attempts to introduce charter schools of competition, break up the teacher unions stranglehold in Baltimore, I don't think so. Will any Democrat run as a school reformer the way Bill Clinton did? This year? I'm doubtful.”

…and on the subject of the weak, “stand-down” policing  in Baltimore early on in the rioting that led to 15 buildings and more than 100 cars being torched early last week, Kristol was dead on in his assessment when he said:

“it’s been a city that's had an awful lot of trouble over the last few decades. And I'm just struck by the contrast to New York. You know, New York instituted broken windows policing. I think there were 2,300 murders in New York in 1990, 333 last year. I mean, that's a pretty amazing drop. New York is now safer than America on the average. It was three times more dangerous in terms of homicides 20 years ago. I think you need to have tough policing.  Obviously, policemen should be held accountable when they do something wrong, but we cannot abandon tough policing and law and order.”

He appeared to be the only guest on the show this week that “gets it.”