March 11, 2008 11:53AM # It’s Hard, Let’s Give Up By [Adam B. Schaeffer](https://www.cato.org/people/adam-b-schaeffer) --- SHARE Now’s no time to go wobbly on school choice. As I [point](https://www.cato.org/2008/03/11/handicapped-kids-dont-count/) out, again, in my earlier post, school choice programs have proliferated in the last ten years. And, as Andrew Coulson (among many others) points out, they [work](https://www.cato.org/2008/03/11/weekly-standard-argues-weakly-for-standards/). This is a time for hope, not for preemptive surrender. In the 1990’s, a structured movement for choice was built and some foundational battles were won, for vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland, and for tax credits and deductions in Arizona and Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. In the last seven years, we’ve seen the *majority* of current choice programs passed. In addition, the policies have been getting better; more expansive and powerful. Daniel Casse repeats another unwarranted conclusion made by Sol Stern in his poorly argued *City Journal* [essay](http://www.city-journal.org/2008/forum0124.html): > His article “School Choice Isn’t Enough” makes the case that after more than a decade of conservative and libertarian agitating, the school choice and voucher movements have been a colossal failure. Who ever said that breaking the stranglehold of the largest and most powerful government monopoly in American history was going to be quick and easy? Ten years, and out? How can anyone justify giving up on a policy movement that has been more successful in the last ten years than in the first ten, that has been *most* successful in the last five years? I guess we should kick Social Security reform to the curb, too. And tax reform; ha, what a pipe dream! Spending control? Pah, don’t make me laugh. While we’re giving up preemptively, why not throw in the towel and just *support* government-controlled universal health-care. Sure seems hard to stop that one, and we already have that big, popular SCHIP thing anyway. And people seem pretty cool with the government expanding its education monopoly back to age 3 in pre‑K. No sense fighting a losing battle. Let’s roll up the whole conservative movement … what a colossal failure that’s been! I can’t for the life of me understand why Reagan didn’t just yell, “Uncle!” instead of “Tear down this wall.” I mean, how long did the Cold War take, and how much did we spend on that whole freedom vs. Soviet Empire waste of time … ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).