Over on Flypaper, Mike Petrilli takes a swipe at NEAL McCluskey for pointing out why national standards are doomed to failure.

And then he compares the infeasibility of national standards, as a method of improving education, to the political difficulty of passing something like our proposal for broad-based education tax credits that would open universal access to school choice.

You see, national standards that improve education are literally an impossible dream because the method is doomed to fail, regardless of its chances of becoming legislation. Broad-based school choice is merely a difficult endeavor like any major reform. But if enacted, it will improve education significantly.

Petrilli implies that a “universal” education tax credit system is impossible.

Really? You mean something akin to the universal voucher program that became law in Utah but was repealed by voters?

Or maybe the donation tax credit programs in Arizona and Georgia, which have no income limits? Those are universal in principle, Mike. A continuing expansion of funding will make them universal in fact.

Our Public Education Tax Credit model legislation combines personal-use credits like those that exist in 3 states with the kind of donation tax credits that exist in 6 states.

Polling consistently shows that universal programs are much more popular than targeted ones. And education tax credits are extremely popular … even a majority of current and former public school employees support education tax credits!

Wake up, Mike. We’re talking about the expansion and combination of widely used, popular, and increasingly bipartisan policies that work.