It occurred to me that most public school systems exist, for all intents and purposes, as government sponsored monopolies. Yes, the rich and those who can get scholarships can shop alternatives, in the form of private schools, but not most people.
And what do you expect from protected monopolies? Poor quality and high prices. And is that not exactly what we are seeing? America spends vastly more per capita than most of the world, and despite that, our average testing scores have actually gone DOWN, in the past 50 years or so I recall reading somewhere. The Department of Education has done literally nothing measurable, at least where K-12 is concerned.
School choice is about empowering average and poor people to break the monopoly. And obviously the monopolists hate the idea.
But I really really think we need to start calling all opponents of School Choice racists and bigots and accusing them of wanting black folks to fail. This is more or less literally true in my view, but it is also a good corrective to the ubiquitous and disingenuous use of those words on a daily basis by the Left. If we start landing some shots by making factually true claims of racism as concerns them, that might change the landscape. It may force them into another tactical lie, which would amount to a withdrawal or even retreat. We need to deny them the words that have any effectiveness.
If rhetorical wars have landscapes, I suppose the generally received meaning of a word–like Justice–is one of the sorts of hills for which both sides are fighting. There can be attack, but there can also be counter attack. The surest way to lose is to accept defeat before it is actually inflicted on you. And there are very few victors in any difficult contest who to do not learn the arts of persistence and tenacity and faith.