School choice has long been a goal of the conservative movement, writes ConnCarroll. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo did not create the public’s distrust in public schools. Public schools did that on their own.
“Winning: New York Magazine’s @jonathanchait fabricated a quotation in an attempt to smear me, but I caught him red-handed and his editors had to retract the false statement and issue a correction,” Rufo tweeted. “Very embarrassing for him.”
The fake quote read, “In order to achieve universal school choice, it’s necessary to create an atmosphere of universal public-school distrust.” These statements may appear to be close in meaning, but they say two very different things. As one of the top comments in Chait’s timeline notes, “One calls for creating mistrust, the other is assuming everyone already mistrusts them.”
And if you look at the polling, confidence in public schools has been decreasing for decades, long before Rufo became an activist. According to Gallup, in 1973, 61% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats had confidence in public schools. By 2000, those numbers had fallen to 33% of Republicans and 43% of Democrats.
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