7. Myron Lieberman: Education Without Romance, Public Choice Economics, and Markets in Education

Lieberman, “Free Market Strategy and Tactics in K–12 Education,” 82.

Lieberman defined “conservative’ as those with a “conviction that school choice and much greater utilization of private schools would be in the public interest.” Myron Lieberman, The Educational Morass (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2007), xv.

Myron Lieberman, “Market Solutions to the Education Crisis,” CATO Policy Analysis 75 (1986); Lieberman, Privatization and Educational Choice; and Myron Lieberman, “Liberating Teachers: Toward Market Competition in Teacher Representation,” CATO Policy Analysis 450 (2002).

E. G. West, “The Political Economy of American Public School Legislation,” Journal of Law and Economics 10 (1967): 101–28; E. G. West, Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1994).

James Buchanan is listed in Lieberman’s acknowledgments in Public Education: An Autopsy as one of several scholars who provided “valuable suggestions or assistance on earlier versions of the manuscript.” Anthony Downs, another economist working in the public choice tradition, was also on this list. Myron Lieberman, Public Education: An Autopsy, 4th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), ix.

James M. Buchanan, “Politics Without Romance: A Sketch of Positive Public Choice Theory and Its Normative Implications,” in The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 46.

Gordon Tullock, Private Wants, Public Means: An Economic Analysis of the Desirable Scope of Government (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 124.

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Penguin, 2017).

Maclean, Democracy in Chains, 66.

Jennifer Burns, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean,” History of Political Economy, 50, no. 3 (September 1, 2018): 640–48, 640.

West, “The Political Economy of American Public School Legislation,” 114. The theory that minorities’ preferences can trump majorities when the benefits to the minority are concentrated but the costs borne by the majority are dispersed was originally laid out by public choice economist Mancur Olsen. See Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).

Gordon Tullock, The Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1965); William A. Niskanen Jr., Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine, Atherton, 1971). Tullock did write, however, that “the larger the bureaucracy and the less it is possible to reduce its objectives to some single numerical measure such as profit, the more likely it is that the individual bureaucrats will be able to follow their individual preferences rather than the preferences of the ‘organization.’” Tullock, Private Wants, Public Means: An Economic Analysis of the Desirable Scope of Government, 124, my italics.

James M. Buchanan, “Rent Seeking Versus Profit Seeking,” in The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 104.

Lieberman, Public Education: An Autopsy, 63. In various writings, Lieberman mentioned examples ranging from the uniformity of teacher pay irrespective of subject (which perpetuates shortages in “critical need” areas), creation of strict “due process” rules for dismissal of ineffective teachers and parental grievances against teachers, and other instances of potential conflict between teachers’ and “consumers’” interests. See particularly Lieberman, Beyond Public Education, chap. 2.

Lieberman, Public Education: An Autopsy, 259. Elsewhere, Lieberman made the same point by reference to the then-recent debate over language arts instruction being grounded either in a phonics or whole-word approach. The issue, he suggested, was divided largely by political bias—those on the conservative right supporting a more traditional phonics approach and those on the liberal left supporting a more “progressive” whole-word approach, each using academic research to bolster their positions. “Politics comes into play when it is essential to adjust competing interests; it is not supposed to be the environment in which we resolve empirical research. In fact, it is remarkable that how to teach reading is still a controversial matter. What private for-profit enterprise would still be debating the issue after it has been addressed by thousands of researchers and expenditures in the billions?” Lieberman, The Educational Morass, 57.

James M. Buchanan, Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), chap. 10.

“Economic Forces and Education,” Washington Journal (C-SPAN, August 26, 2002), www.​c-spanvideo.​org/​program/​Forcesan, accessed on December 15, 2013.

Lieberman, Privatization and Educational Choice, 151. Lieberman’s analysis of “voice” and “exit” draws heavily on Hirschman’s. Yet Lieberman does not address a criticism of the exit option particularly aimed at school choice. Hirschman believed that allowing parents to exit public schools and enter private schools would both discourage parents who would voice criticisms to use exit instead, and leave public schools with less-concerned parents by inducing the more savvy and involved parents to exit the public schools. This, Hirschman argued, risked weakening the already-weak public school system. Lieberman likely did not address this concern because he was already deeply pessimistic that the public school system was organized in a way that could be responsive to voice, even by relatively more attentive parents. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 45–47.

C-Span, “Economic Forces and Education.”

Buchanan, “Rent Seeking Versus Profit Seeking,” 104.

Lieberman, “Free Market Strategy and Tactics in K–12 Education,” 83.