Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
In recent years, teachers have aggressively pushed the idea that school choice is wrong because it siphons or funnels money from the schools that 90% of children attend. Instead of waiting for this to show up in my list of misconceptions, I have already written about it. This is because of how popular and how absurd the 90% argument is. Now, it's time to properly add this defiance of common sense to my series about misconceptions.
The reason that this is such an absurd argument is that it is an argument in favor of choice being oddly framed as an argument against choice. Teachers are arguing that their funding should be based on the fact that 90% attend their schools. If we fully embraced choice, then this is precisely what would happen. 90% of the funding would go to the schools that 90% attend.
It turns out that this is not what they really want. They want 100% to go to the schools that 90% of children attend and 0% to the schools that 10% of children attend. If government-run schools dropped to 50%, these same people would want 100% to go to the schools that 50% attend and 0% to the schools that the other 50% attend. None of these arguments are even remotely compelling. Attaching funding to the percentage of students attending doesn't make any sense outside the context of choice.
Additionally, teachers are trying to use the high number to sway opinions. One of the big ideas behind choice is that people want to help children get out of schools that aren't meeting their needs. You're not going to change minds by insisting that they can't get out now. Advocates for choice insist that children can't get out of schools that don't meet their needs, and teachers are countering by insisting that children can't get out. To put it another way, people who insist that 90% is too high are being countered with the idea that they must be wrong because 90% is correct.
Point for point, every component of the 90% argument is an argument in favor of choice. If the percentage is truly relevant, then the percentage of funding should reflect the percentage attending. If 90% of children can't get out of the government-run model, then we need to make it easier to leave. These are great arguments in favor of choice. For some bizarre reason that I still don't understand, this argument is instead being treated as an argument against choice. Let's face it. The 90% argument is so ridiculously stupid that it's difficult to explain how stupid it is
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