Why does school choice advance in legislative venues but suffer defeat after defeat when put to a public vote?
That's the question I thought of when reading Pete DuPont's OpinionJournal.com op-ed on the Utah voucher vote.

He points out that the measure would actually give government-run schools increased per-pupil funding: $1 billion in extra funding, spread over 13 years. And of course this could mean that classes might get smaller—the Holy Grail of the education blob.

But choice at the ballot box is a hard sell. "While there are successful school choice programs operating in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington," he writes "10 state referenda on various voucher proposals have been defeated since 1972, including two defeats each in California, Michigan and Colorado."

One reason: the standard problem of politics. Those who would benefit from a change in policy are many, but unorganized. Those who would be the most hurt—in this case, teacher union bosses—are few in number, but possessing powerful incentives to act. Thanks to collective bargaining agreements and mandatory fees, they have ready cash at their disposal.

It’s easy to blame cash, or, as Patrick Byrne, who funded much of the pro-voucher campaign did, blame parents for not caring enough about children.

Each criticism falls short of the mark, however. Certainly, opponents of choice have a near-lock on institutional power, just as they have a near-lock on student enrollment.

But they have on their side popular suspicion of applying the power of free markets to education. The general population knows that markets are powerful—and powerfully disruptive.

Until the public is willing to accept the logic of market-based competition among schools, advocates of choice will likely suffer more defeats when they are subjected to the ballot box.

That's the argument made by The Heartland Institute.

In Education and Capitalism, the Institute's president and chairman "contend that the U.S. public will not embrace market-based reforms beyond pilot programs for the inner-city poor or charter schools until they understand what markets are and trust them to provide quality education for their children, just as markets provide superior goods and services in nearly all parts of modern economies."