Rick Hess has confirmed my claim that advocates for market forces—choice and competition—"[believe] that families will put the needs of their own children first," adding:
"Otherwise, the whole thing kind of breaks down. Indeed, I find such behavior normal, commendable, and healthy. There's nothing secretive here. I expect and hope parents will do their best to advocate for their own children, and to lawfully protect their homes, neighborhoods, and communities." ("Occupy School Choice?")
He then takes this opportunity to take a swipe at what he calls "Occupy Wall Streeters":
"Then there's the approach of an Occupy Wall Streeter. Thrilled to have identified another injustice and by his own goodness, the Occupier has no time to worry about competing values, incentives, unanticipated consequences, or bourgeois concepts like 'property.' He has no time for win-win solutions. Instead, he is excited, right here and right now, to denounce inequity and insist that everyone else do the 'right thing.' The Occupier loves heated rhetoric and is all too ready to attack parents watching out for their kids and their home values as selfish and mean-spirited."
Embedded in this caricature of anyone challenging choice and competition paradigms is an important term that also exposes who the choice advocates are and what they seek: "win-win."
Win-Win, Rising Tides, and Other Shell Games
"Win-win" is less often invoked than other favorite slogans from corporate reformers such as "poverty is not destiny," "a rising tide lifts all boats," or "poverty is not an excuse," but "win-win" is little more than a shell game, especially when placed in the context of a central claim of market ideologues—"a rising tide lifts all boats."
"Win-win" has been used by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, but the tag-line and claims have been discredited. Yet, market advocates persist in promoting compelling ideologies that fall apart against evidence.
Hess's use of "win-win" suggests that competition and choice are at least valid if not the best ways to seek equity. In fact, Hess frames choice advocacy as ethical, a part of good ol' America: "That's because most Americans think ideas like filial love, property, hard work, and incentives are good ones, and actually incorporate those into their notions of what's 'fair.'"
First, the claim that competition creates a "win-win" outcome defies logic. Competition by its nature insures winners and losers, regardless of merit beyond the narrow constraints of the competition. Place four incompetent golfers in a golf tournament against each other and you'll achieve a ranking of 1-4. The fact of competing doesn't achieve anything such as merit or equity.
Next, critical and progressive educators are generally seeking equity and social justice, both of which could be fairly captured in the slogan "win-win"; thus, the irony of market advocates claiming they are seeking win-win solutions is that "win-win" is achieved not through competition and choice, but through collaboration and compromise.
So finally, let's do a thought experiment with the "win-win" claims of the choice advocates and place that within the "rising tides" claim.
Here is the current income distribution in the U.S. (note that this graph is quite different than the normal curve you'd expect if the current U.S. consumer culture rewarded equitably merit). [1]
Now let's take that distribution and put it in a boat floating in a very shallow pool.
Next, increase the forces filling that pool so that the tide rises. What happens? The same inequity, just now sitting in more water.
A historical and current commitment to competition and consumerism has created an inequitable distribution of wealth in the U.S. Perpetuating or increasing the same forces will never address the inequity those forces have created.
This is the same problem with education reform. Historical and current commitments to accountability, standards, and testing have created an inequitable education system. Increasing those practices will only make that inequity worse.
If we are genuinely seeking "win-win solutions" to our society and our schools, we must consider the value of collaboration against the corrosive influences of competition just as we must rethink the test-based accountability practices reinforcing educational inequity.
Acknowledging inequity, as Hess and some choice advocates do, and then suggesting that competition can erase that inequity again defies logic. Promoting a 100-yard dash where some people start at the forty-yard mark and others begin at the starting line—all of which have their starting points determined through no merit or fault of their own—not only can never achieve a "win-win" outcome, but has a pre-determined set of winners and losers.
To create different outcomes—to move from inequity to equity—we must change the forces that create the outcomes we reject. Ironically, the choice that we need to make to achieve equity is to reject competition and seek collaboration.
[1] Note also distributions by race.