“Al Frisby, a member of Move On and a retired Shawnee Mission biology teacher, said the public school rally was organized in response to the school-choice event. He said champions of public education were concerned about state tax dollars flowing to private schools.

“’There’s no transparency with these private schools,’ Frisby said. ‘They don’t have oversight by the school board. We give them public money…and then they just go do what they want to do.’

“David Dorsey, a policy analyst with the conservative-leaning Kansas Policy Institute, said expanding options for educating Kansas children was beneficial to all.

“’Well, I just believe any time you offer people choice, it’s going to lead to better outcomes for everyone,’ Dorsey said.

Unfortunately, Mr. Dorsey’s comments are not supported by research. Choice does not lead to better outcomes. In fact, contrast Mr. Dorsey’s comments with the comments of a woman from the similarly-aligned Hoover Institution (and wife to state’s witness in the Gannon case, Eric Hanushek).

“This is one of the big insights for me. I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education. I’ve studied competitive markets for much of my career. That’s my academic focus for my work. And it’s [education] the only industry/sector where the market mechanism just doesn’t work. I think it’s not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state. I think there are other supports that are needed. Frankly parents have not been really well educated in the mechanisms of choice.… I think the policy environment really needs to focus on creating much more information and transparency about performance than we’ve had for the 20 years of the charter school movement. I think we need to have a greater degree of oversight of charter schools, but I also think we have to have some oversight of the overseers.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/12/12/major-charter-researcher-causes-stir-with-comments-about-market-based-school-reform/

Read the article on the rallies here: http://cjonline.com/news/2016-01-28/capitol-draws-competing-private-public-school-rallies