May 19, 2009 10:23AM # Support for Private School Choice Officially “Mainstream” By [Adam B. Schaeffer](https://www.cato.org/people/adam-b-schaeffer) --- SHARE The *USA Today* [editorializes](http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/05/our-view-on-improving-education-despite-success-school-choice-runs-into-new-barriers.html) this morning in support of the DC voucher program and school choice in general. That’s a shift from last year when Robert Enlow of the Friedman Foundation had to [respond](http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/02/opposing-view-1.html) to their [dismissal](http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/02/our-view-on-sch.html) of vouchers. From the enlightened board: > As an Education Department spokesman says, “The unions are not happy.” But 20 million low-income school kids need a chance to succeed. School choice is the most effective way to give it to them. The shift of center-left elite opinion on school choice is a hugely important development, as I [noted](http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/04/school_choice_support_has_main.html) with the first wave of mainstream media attention to the DC voucher program’s death-sentence: > When elites unite on mainstream issues, the public’s response is relatively nonideological and lopsided. School choice is progressively mainstreaming, slowly but surely moving from a polarized elite debate to one where the intensity and support is weighted in favor of school choice. > > > When an issue that used to be considered free-market fringe is embraced as a moral litmus test for politicians by liberal editorial boards, the issue-argument has been won. That’s certainly not to say the policy war has been won, but an important battle toward realizing that goal has been. > > > The opposition’s intensity and moral certitude is bleeding out one program at a time. School choice is no longer an abstract proposition; faces and lives are attached to the 24 private school-choice programs in 14 states and the District of Columbia. In the past four years, four education tax-credit programs have passed that serve at least low-income children… > > > School-choice opponents might have won the battle over vouchers in the District, but they are losing the larger war. They have inadvertently revealed what’s truly at stake; not funding issues or public school ideology, but our promise to all children of a fair shot at success in life. > > > Choice opponents are on the wrong side of right and the wrong side of history. ##### 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/).