Mitch Daniels: School Choice "is a social justice issue"

Indeed, it is.  (If you have not read Jack Coons's 1992 First Things essay, "School Choice as Simple Justice", you should.)  And, there's also this article, that I wrote with Prof. Nicole Stelle Garnett, School Choice, the First Amendment, and Social Justice.  

Here is the interview with Purdue's president, Mitch Daniels.  Among other things:

The starting point for me has always been that [the debate over school choice] needs to be defined by a term which has been, I think, improperly appropriated by others: This is a social justice issue. Social justice, first of all, cannot be allowed to [only] mean taking money from A and handing it to B. That can occasionally be just. But what is just is one of the fundamental questions always. And everybody should be able to approach it and lay claim to it if they have a good argument. So whatever social justice is, enabling poor people to have the same choice about one of the most fundamental of life's decisions—the education of their child—qualifies, and so I always talked about it that way.

I think there's very good evidence that competition improves education both in the voucher schools and in the surrounding public schools. And we've seen it here. But I think you start the argument with simple fairness and equity for those less fortunate, and that gets you a certain distance. Now, there is no special interest in our society as strong, as stubborn, as well-funded, and as permanent as the public education establishment. And there is no argument one can make—certainly not one based on welfare of children or better results—that is persuasive to folks who believe that the system itself and the adults in it are the primary priority. So to answer your question: You have to get to a political equation where you can pass these things over their efforts, which are always very sophisticated, well-funded, and untiring.