This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 25th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown. As Families Mark School Choice Week, it's worth understanding more

deeply some of the rhetoric surrounding

educational freedom like fund students not systems. It's a popular slogan

but is it a good one? Does it communicate anything to people who aren't already on team school choice?

Jason Bedrick offers his thoughts.

I guess I want to start with what generated this conversation, which was a reporter

in Louisville, Kentucky who works at my most recent former hometown

paper, the Louisville Courier Journal, suggesting that Fund Students, not Systems systems was in a sense a bad slogan because the tax credits

that were created in Kentucky's landmark school choice reform that was passed last year was a system of

tax credits and suggested that people like you and me probably would not want to have that conversation about whether or not that is a good slogan.

So we're sort of here to have that conversation now. We invited Olivia to join us. She was unable to do so. So let's evaluate what

school choice people mean when they say fund students not systems.

Yeah, so I think that the main critique is that while there's still a system, but we're not saying

that there's not going to be a system or multiple different systems. The question is whether the state is

directly funding that system or if the state is funding the students. Now what's the difference? Well think of it in terms of

alleviating hunger, right? Should the government fund a system of food banks or give people food stamps? Well, what's the difference? Either way there's a system, whether either food banks or grocery stores and people are getting food.

But there is a major difference, right?

If the food banks are getting the money directly,

then they're going to be primarily accountable to the government

and not directly accountable to the people that they are serving.

The grocery store on the other hand is accountable primarily to their customers.

...