Hillary Clinton Promises To Close All Public Schools by Daniel Bier, Foundation For Economic Education
At a town hall event in Iowa, Hillary Clinton announced to supporters,
This school district and these schools throughout Iowa are doing a better than average job.
Now, I wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better than average job.
If a school’s not doing a good job, then you know it may not be good for the kids.
Well, this is certainly a bold and refreshing shakeup of government education standards.
The Weekly Standard interprets her statement to imply that Ms. Clinton would have to close half of all public schools. This is incorrectly confusing the average with the median.
In fact, as my friend Will Luther points out, the number of schools under the Clinton Standard approaches zero. Since some schools will always be “below average,” every iteration of this rule culls out a chunk of public schools, until we finally get down to just one school. That school is, by definition, average, not “better than average,” so alas, it too must close.
Proponents of getting the government out of education have always debated about the intermediate steps to achieving total privatization. Ms. Clinton’s rule seems to outline a good plan.
