Corey DeAngelis wins libertarian support for school choice in live debate, according to audience

Arguing libertarians should support school choice, policy expert Corey DeAngelis won a live debate on Monday, according to survey results of the audience before and after the dialogue. 

In an event hosted by the Soho Forum, DeAngelis, who is the executive director of the Education Freedom Institute, debated in support of the resolution, “Today’s school-choice movement in the U.S. is worthy of support by libertarians.” 

His opponent was Stephan Kinsella, a libertarian lawyer and author, who argued the opposite. 

In the Oxford-style debate, each participant gave a 15-minute opening remark, a 5-minute rebuttal and brief closing remarks. They also answered questions from the audience

DeAngelis centered his arguments around a quote from famed economist Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

The school choice advocate acknowledged that while such programs aren’t the libertarian ideal, they are still a major improvement to the current government and union monopoly.

Since the government already regulates home and private education, DeAngelis argued, incremental steps in the right direction are needed. Perfect shouldn’t be enemy of the good, he said.

He gave examples of how some of the states with the strongest school choice policies today actually have the fewest regulations for home and private schools.

However, Kinsella argued that libertarians shouldn’t support the government redistribution of wealth via taxation, rebranding public education as “education welfare.” 

The main thrust of his argument was that school choice doesn’t discourage government intervention. Instead, Kinsella wants to see the “separation of education and state,” a parody of the oft-repeated “separation of church and state.” 

Audience members were invited to vote in favor of, against, or undecided on the resolution before the debate began. Afterwards, the audience submitted a second wave of votes to determine how much ground each speaker had gained. 

While both speakers won additional support, DeAngelis gained far more ground. 

Support for Kinsella went from 10% to 23% while support for DeAngelis went from 45% to 64%, making school choice the clear winner.

Twelve percent of the attendees remained undecided, even after the debate.  

The debate was attended by a live audience and 700 virtual attendees, about seven times more than usual, according to Soho Forum staff. 

The Soho Forum, an initiative of the libertarian Reason Foundation, hosts monthly debates on a wide variety of topics from immigration to the Federal Reserve to the 1619 Project.