The 90% argument

If you can read this, thank your teachers. Actually, that argument completely defies common sense. Babysitters are paid better than teachers. Oops. There's that common sense problem again. Enough time has passed that teachers have hopefully developed some common sense. Let's see if they have finally learned. "Rather than support the public schools 90 percent of U.S. children attend, you have repeatedly tried to push unacceptable vouchers. Why keep pushing them when parents are choosing public schools?"  I kept the most popular copy-and-pasted version, but there's that common sense issue yet again.


I will admit that I'm not much of a writer. To further complicate things, it's not always easy to explain something that needs no explanation. Because so many people are falling for the teachers' embarrassingly weak arguments, I will have to try to explain why the 90% argument should be considered an insult to our intelligence.

The idea behind school choice is that children should not be forced to go to public schools if alternatives can better meet their needs. It's the idea that although 90% of children go through public schools, 90% shouldn't. Teachers are countering with the argument that 90% of children go through public schools.

Do you see the problem with that argument? If you didn't, I'm not sure that I can make it any more obvious. Again, I will try. School choice advocates insist that 90% of children attending public schools is too high. Teachers are countering that that 90% of children do attend public schools. School choice advocates aren't disputing if 90% do. They are disputing the idea that 90% should.

Do does not equal should. The argument being made by teachers does absolutely nothing to even diminish the views of the school choice community, which is that the number is too high, not non-existent. Teachers are essentially pushing the idea that school choice advocates must be wrong because the number that school choice advocates are citing as too high is accurate.

To make matters worse, many teachers combine this argument with outright lies. They insist that parents who send their children to public schools choose to send their children to public schools. Although too few people have looked into this supposed choice, those who have typically find that far less than 90% of parents would actually make that choice. Simply put, public schooling is not a choice.

Like far too many go-to arguments of the teaching profession, it's remarkable that the 90% argument has reached a copy-and-paste status. This is yet another argument that can be defeated with nothing more than common sense. Granted, I already knew that the NEA and AFT were anti-thought organizations. Like their other instances of defiance to common sense, it appears that many teachers are mindlessly accepting the narrative. That's the only logical explanation for how so many people can repeat something so stupid.

There's one final thing that I wanted to mention. I added this topic to my list of misconceptions that I want to address. The approach that I have taken for misconceptions means that it will take a long time before I will get to it. Because I'm seeing this argument so much right now, I decided to bump up the priority. This will likely result in a repeat topic in the future when I finally get to the misconception.

Speaking of repeating, I hate having to repeatedly write new responses to the copy-and-paste argument. This post can at least provide me with the option to reply with my own copy-and-paste link to respond. If you are like me and are sick of teachers insulting your intelligence, feel free to follow my lead. Call teachers out when they paste their 90% argument.

Update 8/25:
When I first wrote this post, I didn't even touch on another big flaw with the 90% argument. Teachers are arguing against choice on the grounds that funding should reflect that 90% of students attend government-run schools. It makes sense if 90% of funding goes to schools where 90% of students attend, but the argument doesn't exactly hold if they insist that 100% of educational funds should go to the 90% of students they're citing.

The simple reality is that the 90% argument is an argument in favor of choice. If funding should reflect attendance, that's effectively arguing that funding should follow the child. This is a big part of why the 90% argument is absurd. The 90% argument is used almost exclusively to attack proposals for educational or school choice even though the argument is a valid argument in favor of choice.

Teachers are telling us that we can't help children escape who are being harmed by government-run schools. Why? Because funding should be based on the idea that 90% attend these schools, but we can't allow that number to influence funding. This is completely contrary and nonsensical. And again, it's a complete defiance of common sense.