Milton Friedman, Race, and the Origins of the National School Choice Movement

• In Event: "We the People": Collaboration and Community Empowerment

Abstract

This paper explores the origins of school choice by examining the work of its progenitor, the economist Milton Friedman, in relationship to how the idea was first applied through “freedom of choice” plans across the South. This paper expands our historical understanding of choice by examining the development of race-neutral rhetoric, “objective” economic policy in education, and urban renewal projects in Chicago that redefined educational spaces through racial segregation. It also examines how professional discourse between Friedman and southern legislators and powerbrokers negotiated a blueprint for a national school choice movement. This research demonstrates that racist “freedom of choice” plans in the South were not limited to Dixie and the development of such plans defined desegregation in the urban North.

Author

• Jon Hale, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign