One wrong turn on the “road to school” issues, was embodied by Milton Friedman’s idea of government funded school vouchers as free market enterprise to ostensibly create competition for government funded schools. Why advocates for private free market enterprise would not/could not grasp that no reasonable entity, whether private or government, ever funds its own demise through competition with itself, unless private schools were the target to be usurped by government control and regulation, is a question of the era. The idea of competitive free market enterprise has no conceptual room for funding with government funds which are obtained by virtue of government “power of the sword” to compel. There is simply no way to synthesize the two concepts except to confound the principles of free market and government funding. That is currently in high gear as well with what is called “public-private partnerships”. The dichotomy of charter schools as “competition” in real terms being the darling of the “right” is equally as mystifying.
Not possessing the ability to read minds, one can only wonder at the contradictions. The definition of political principles is becoming blurred as political parties become more meaningless with every election, labels for “Conservative” or “Liberal are also rapidly becoming obfuscated.