Today EdChoice runs the last installment in my series on the future of education and school accountability in a pluralistic society. I argue the contemporary challenge can be met with a focus on school choice, local polity and – perhaps hardest and most important of all – a new description of what education is and is for, something reformers are uniquely positioned to provide.

I particularly stress the need for the school choice movement to go beyond – without repudiating – its rhetoric about markets and competition:

The most important argument for letting parents hold schools accountable (through choice) is that parents are allowed to know what is true, good and beautiful. The whole point of education is to cultivate the power to achieve and appreciate these transcendent things. The whole challenge of education in a pluralistic environment is that we disagree about them, so there are major limits to government’s ability to act upon them. Empowering parents does not by itself make the whole problem of pluralism go away, but it must be at the center of any viable solution…

Schools of choice are allowed to know what they believe, and can therefore have both freedom and community. This is why federal data show private schools already outperform public schools dramatically across a wide variety of measures of school culture, including cooperation among staff, shared understanding of school mission, consistent enforcement of rules, administrative support of teachers, lower ethnic tension and satisfaction with working conditions…

Establishing a strong connection between parents and schools is another key benefit. This is probably a major factor in a notable fact that researchers struggle to explain: School choice produces very impressive increases in important outcomes that are non-cognitive and character-related—like high school graduation rates—even as test score improvements, while consistent, are more moderate. In one of the most important educational books of our generation, sociologist James Davison Hunter shows how the formation of the child is critically hindered when children perceive a disconnect between key authority figures in their education—especially parents and teachers.

This series has been a big challenge but a lot of fun to write. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts!