Choice is the real accountability

"We’re familiar enough with this principle of accountability in other contexts," Greg Forster writes in Perspective.

If a doctor or grocery store or restaurant gives you bad service, you hold it accountable by taking your business elsewhere. We do this because it respects the freedom and dignity of the customer—and also because it works. Schools are almost the only type of organization we don’t hold accountable in this way. 

The fact that school choice involves public dollars is no reason to shun this morally right and highly effective approach to accountability. We give people food stamps and then let them choose where to buy their food instead of running state-owned grocery stores and creating a federal grocery regulator. One of the best policy improvements in recent history was the change in housing subsidies from government-owned “housing projects,” which were consistently horrific, to what are called “Section 8 vouchers,” which subsidize housing but let people choose where to rent.