This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 16th, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

Is School Choice a policy preference rooted in racism?

It's a bold claim and one that demands some evidence.

Neil McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom discusses the claims.

How do critics come at this to conclude that school choice is rooted in a kind of bigotry.

Well, the way things have sort of kicked off in what seems to be a new push by school choice opponents

to say the reason you should oppose

choice is because it's based in racism and bigotry.

It really seemed to start with a report that came out

of the Center for American Progress, the beginning of July, that

asked sort of straight up in its title whether school choice or school vouchers are racist.

It said that they have a clearly racist origin.

And therefore it is a totally legitimate question to say,

well, is school choice today racist?

It's not like this is a brand new topic.

People have talked about this for on and off, but it's never really been elevated to headlines but that Center for American Progress report

was launched by the way at the American Federation for Teachers which is the second largest

teachers union

in the country.

And what we saw was then Randy Weingarden,

who's the president of the AFT,

in a speech to that union's national convention

...