It is Not Just About Educational Choice

The last several MOJ posts that have addressed the issue of education have focused on school choice, with both Greg and John's latest comments criticizing Obama's position on vouchers for Catholic schools. 

I applaud a focus on education, but want to underscore that when we are considering what we think about the candidates' positions regarding education, a lot more than choice is involved.  The New York Times reports this moring that the U.S., which once had the highest high school graduation rate in the world is not 13th, behind such luminaries as the Czech Republic and Slovenia.  It also cites a report form the nonpartisan Education Trust that the U.S. is the only industrialized country where young people today are less likely to graduate high school than their parents.  We have a failure here that has to be addressed and it is going to require a lot more than allowing some people to choose to go to Catholic schools.

I'm not here making a case for one candidate or the other.  I simply want to remind us not to be too narrow in our identification of the relevent questions for purposes of evaluating the candidates when it comes to education.