Steve Jobs, Friedman, Utah, and School Vouchers

After co-founding, leaving, and then coming back to save Apple in 1997 and doing what I'd like to call "a ridiculously good job", I think it's safe to say Steve Jobs is a rather smart man who knows how to get things done. Which is why last Friday he gave a speech where he declared...

"I believe that what's wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way."

Utah has definitely caught on to the right idea by passing a state law that provides school vouchers for all children in the state of Utah, by far the most expansive school voucher system in the country.

This is a superb precedent for the nation and quite frankly, I'm extremely excited to see the teacher's unions in that state lose a lot of power so the children and parents have a choice. The power is no longer in the teacher's hands, but the parents. Milton Friedman, another amazing man who might know a thing or two, had advocated school vouchers for 50 years.

Any person with any amount of common sense knows that to reform our failing school systems we have to break the stranglehold the unions have on our schools and make our education systems adhere to principles of accountability. The charter school and school voucher movement is definitely picking up steam and with that said, these teacher's unions are now only hurting themselves as reform could potentially pass them by. Self-interest and ignorantly blocking personal accountability and responsibility never moved anything forward. The Republican party is one of progress, forward movement, and results that can be measured and observed. The Democrats who cater to unions don't really grasp that concept.