What do you need to have a free market in education? Price change? Low barriers to entry? Product differentiation? Other good stuff? Nah! All you need is something slightly less restrictive than traditional, absolute command-and-control public schooling, and you’ve got and yourself a free market, Bub!

OK, obviously that’s not the case, but you wouldn’t know it from education stories you read in some of the nation’s biggest newspapers. A couple of weeks ago the Washington Post ran an article that called the hiring of private management firms to run some public schools in Philadelphia a test of whether the “free market could educate children more efficiently than the government.” Andrew Coulson took the Post to task for that, pointing out that “Philadelphia did not create a ‘free market’ in education. What it did was to subcontract aspects of its monopoly to providers of its own choosing.”

Today, the Houston Chronicle offers an arguably even more egregious abuse of the term “free market,” declaring that allowing some kids from outside of the Houston Independent School District to go to Houston schools free of charge—but carrying state dollars—“would employ a free market approach to increase revenue while addressing the needs of students just beyond the HISD boundary.” No new providers—not even new managers, like in Philly—no pricing, no product differentiation, just a few kids able to attend government schools in Houston rather than in their home districts.

It’s hard to tell whether this regular sullying of the free market’s good name is done to make free markets look bad, or out of ignorance. If it’s the former, then Houston (I can’t help myself!) we have a problem! If it’s the latter, thankfully we have a solution: Education journalists, give this kid a call!