In school-choice circles, Milton Friedman’s 1955 essay “The Role of Government in Education” is considered a (if not the) seminal text. It’s often credited with being the first to propose a voucher-like system for American K–12 education.

Today, school choice is a dominant force in education policy. Parents can select from an array of school options via an array of government programs. The scholarship tax-credit program in the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill will likely amount to the largest expansion of choice in American history. It is not too much to say that Friedman’s thinking has won the day.

Despite all of this—I must admit, ugh—I never liked that essay all that much. This is a very strange thing for a long–time school–choice advocate to concede. But it’s true.

Didn’t Believe the Hype

I spent a chunk of my early career fighting to expand the schooling options available to families. Back then, and for years afterward, I thought Friedman’s essay was naive. Unrealistic. Even simplistic. I thought it demonstrated how little he knew about America’s system of schooling. The essay was abstract to the point of ignoring virtually all matters of constitutional law, state policy, and historical practice.

Moreover, in time I got to know some of the people who were actually responsible for early choice programs (like Milwaukee’s vouchers and the advent of charter schooling in Minnesota and beyond), and very few of these folks were devotees of Friedman. Their thinking was shaped by different influences. I concluded that Friedman’s role was important but overhyped.

But in revisiting that essay, I see how much he got right. In fact, the essay demonstrates why outsiders are often essential to a field’s advancement.

Incommensurability

As a general rule, experts in any field are similar to one another. Their professional formation is standardized. They read the same books and essays. They learn from the same leading professors. They are taught to ask the same types of questions and use the same data sets. They climb the same ladders. Kuhn described this as the field’s “paradigm.” This standardization enables “normal science”—stability in concepts and a common language leading to incremental gains. But because the experts see the world the same way, collectively they have blind spots. This is where outsiders can help.

Friedman was not a scholar of K–12 schooling. Experts in education (then and now) focus on things like funding formulas, reading strategies, special-education litigation, and curriculum-standards alignment. Friedman started from a very different point. He simply asked why America’s K–12 system assumed that the government’s legitimate interest in education necessitated a government monopoly over the operation of public schools. Why couldn’t, he wondered, the government fund education while allowing others to actually run schools?

He agreed that a stable, democratic society needs to teach the next generation knowledge and skills; he just wasn’t convinced that the government had to lead that teaching.

Soon, defenders of the existing system demonized his view as a nefarious attempt to “privatize” education. But his real transgression was asking a fundamental question that the experts had missed. Those steeped in the system took the its contours for granted. Friedman didn’t. This was a revolutionary idea.

Judicious Theorizing

What followed in his essay is a remarkably level-headed investigation of what a different approach might look like. Along the way, he surfaced several of the knotty questions that still bedevil school choice policy today. And, maybe most notably, Friedman takes those questions more seriously than some later school choice advocates: Whereas some choice backers can act as though their policy preferences have no downsides, Friedman recognized those downsides and grappled with them—even conceding important points.

For example, though he doesn’t write it in his essay, it is the case that state constitutions explicitly obligate state governments to ensure that a system of public education is available to all students. But those constitutional provisions don’t say what form that system is to take. That’s up to state legislatures. As a matter of America’s unusual history and traditions, the operation of public schools had been left to hyper-local government bodies that eventually grew into large school districts. Friedman’s implicit question was: Could these arrangements happen some other way? In my words: Can we live up to the state-constitutional obligation while diversifying the entities allowed to run “public” schools?

Friedman’s ultimate policy proposal—providing funding to families so they could choose from among schools run by non-governmental bodies—would presumably lead to more options, more competition, and greater efficiency. But he recognized several likely challenges. How would we ensure that the participating schools were of sufficient quality? What about low-density rural areas that can’t sustain a market of education providers? Would a dynamic, sprawling marketplace inevitably lead to some schools teaching dangerous moral values or not teaching citizenship? Would allowing families to choose schools fracture society instead of fostering cohesion?

Such questions are alive today: America’s schools are struggling mightily with student achievement, and many Americans long for a greater sense of community solidarity. Friedman doesn’t fully adjudicate these matters, but his approach is thoughtful and prudent.

Asking the Impertinent Question

Indeed, the most compelling aspect of his essay is its modest conclusion. He does NOT argue for ending the government operation of K–12 schools. Instead, he sees the wisdom in a “mixed” system: The government continues running some schools (for the families who want them) while providing equal funding to families who want an alternative. Those dollars could then be used at “approved” schools. Far from recommending a libertarian free-for-all, Friedman sees a role for the state in both running schools and ensuring the quality of participating privately operated schools.

It would be too much to say that Friedman caused the last 35 years worth of school choice growth. Many advocates of school choice today know little of Friedman, and some of those who know his work disagree with it to some extent.

But it is not too much to say that he foresaw what K–12 schooling could and has become. In 1955, virtually every public school in America was run by the government and enrolled based on students’ home addresses. There was virtually no choice or differentiation. Today, school districts still run most public schools. But that traditional, district-based system enables more choice today than ever before: We have magnets, inter-district choice, intra-district choice, contract schools, schools inside of schools, and more.

We also have charter schools—public schools overseen by publicly approved bodies but run independently by non-governmental entities. We also have vouchers, education savings accounts, scholarship tax credits, and more—programs that allow families to access dollars that can pay for an array of privately-run options.

American schooling is still far from perfect. But the proliferation of choice over the last two generations is the biggest K–12 systemic development of our lifetimes.

It is striking that these changes owe a great deal to the thinking of an outsider who began with a simple question that the supposed experts never asked.

Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a writer for the Substack “Governing Right,” where this post was originally published.