At its heart, the debate about school choice is the conflict of ideas about the best way to allocate limited financial resources for a socially desirable result. One side believes in experts exercising political power, the other side believes in decentralized markets and the power of consumers.

Proponents of markets have evidence to validate their claims. Those who advocate the political allocation of limited resources have little evidence in their favor. In fact, they are forced to ignore much evidence that contradicts their view. Politically allocated resources are what made the South Carolina public education system what it is today.

Considering the overwhelming evidence in favor of the productive power of free individuals and markets, the only parts of the public debate on school choice tax credits that are “just plan wrong” are the arguments presented against deregulating what has been called the last public monopoly.

n• It will drain money from public schools. You can say deregulating telecommunications resulted in AT&T losing money, but deregulation unarguably improved consumer choice, pricing and product innovation. We are better off because we created a telecommunications marketplace rather than rely on a telecommunications monopoly. Politically boxing out competitors because they will upset the financial interests of the status quo is the worst reason to deny parents a competitive market for education.

• There are no alternatives in the poorest counties. The public school is the only school. It is true that there are currently few alternatives in the poorest counties. However, this situation is the result of government assuming the role of a monopoly provider with enough political clout to suppress competition.

Poor parents certainly have the desire for better education. Tax credits and scholarship-granting organizations will give them the purchasing power.

• Some parents just don’t care. School choice will do nothing to help those children. It is simply not justifiable to deny freedom of choice to the majority of parents who do care because a small number of parents do not.

• School choice tax credits encourage private schools with little or no accountability. Market standards of accountability are more objective and much more useful than government ones. To say that school choice relies on market standards of accountability, not government standards, is actually high praise.

There are many examples of markets creating aids for the consumer seeking reliable measures of quality. For example, The U.S. News and World Report Guide to Colleges, The Princeton Review, Consumer Reports magazine and Morningstar mutual fund ratings, to name just a few.

Contrast that with a public school system that rates itself. Is it any wonder that we are regularly told we are making “wonderful progress” while our graduation rates and SAT scores remain among the lowest in the country?

• School choice puts public money into private schools. This is simply false. If you spend money on child care, you can claim a tax credit. It is your money when you spend it, and the government simply gives you a break for spending it on child care as opposed to video poker or the lottery. Such a break is not public money, any more than a tax-deductible charitable contribution. Any claim to the contrary is completely dishonest.

Improving education must consist of some form of school choice, the greater the better. Consumers have benefited from one deregulated industry after another, from telecommunications, to securities, to airlines. Education should prove no different.

America is a land of opportunity precisely because limited resources are allocated by competition and markets, not by political clout.

Somewhere out there, there is a Sam Walton or Bill Gates of education, just waiting for the opportunity to exercise real creativity in the effective education of children. School choice tax credits may be just what that person is waiting for. We should not keep him or her waiting any longer.

Mr. Rast is a senior vice president with a Fortune 500 company and the president of The Bastiat Society. He can be reached at benrast@sc.rr.com.