In 2013, Anita Belcher was a single mom in Arizona trying to raise two young boys, both with learning disabilities. Thanks to the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) rogram, she was able to enroll the oldest child in a private school that met his special needs.
“The first week he was there, he cried, he literally cried because he didn’t want to leave,” Anita said. “It brought me to tears. That’s the great thing about the scholarship, you get to decide where you want to place your child or if you even want to homeschool.”
In the four years since Anita used Arizona’s ESA program to rescue her child from public schools that couldn’t meet his needs and her own expectations, additional school choice programs have been created and existing programs expanded all across the country. That’s good news for kids and parents.
School Choice Arrives
After a long and slow climb beginning halfa-century ago, school choice has finally arrived. New programs are starting and existing programs are being expanded in unprecedented numbers. After false starts in the 1990s, when Milwaukee launched the first modern voucher program, and again in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when the Supreme Court cleared away concerns about the constitutionality of letting parents choose the schools their children attend, school choice has finally arrived.
According to EdChoice, today 25 voucher programs operate in 14 states, 21 tax-credit scholarship programs in 17 states, individual tax deduction programs in four states, and education savings accounts programs in four states. Forty-two states have charter schools, which collectively enroll nearly 3 million students.
Students who enroll in these programs experience improved academic achievement, graduation rates, and college enrollment rates. Parents are more likely to be engaged in their children’s education and to be more satisfied with school performance. The achievement gap between white and minority students is smaller.
There’s simply no denying it: School choice works.
Failed Coups
The success of the school choice movement has not gone unnoticed by its foes.
Teachers unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other liberal advocacy groups have sued to try to stop every new program and the expansion of every existing program. They spend millions of dollars every year trying to defeat pro-school-choice candidates in elections, and millions of dollars more harassing and defaming parents who simply want a better life for their kids.
In recent years, school choice opponents tried two novel ways to destroy the movement. The first came from within.
Liberal activists succeeded in taking over the leadership of some pro-charter school organizations and used them to campaign against vouchers and tax credits. It was a clever strategy, since charter school operators don’t want the increased competition from private schools that real school choice would bring.
Groups like Democrats for Education Reform, StudentsFirst, and Parent Revolution raised millions of dollars from gullible conservative and libertarian philanthropists, only to become part of the left’s resistance to real school choice. Thankfully, these groups are losing funding and influence as the charter school movement sputters due to their mismanagement, and many donors realize their mistakes.
The second attack came from Washington, DC. Seeing enrollment rising in choice schools, teachers unions and liberals used their control of the U.S. Department of Education under President Barack Obama to bring about the adoption of a national curriculum for K–12 schools. If they couldn’t stop parents from choosing the schools their children attend, why not pass laws forcing all schools to teach the same dumbed-down and politicized curriculum? Brilliant!
The story of how Common Core State Standards were created and then foisted on an unknowing public has been told well in past Heartland publications by Joy Pullmann and others. Thankfully, the rapid demise of Common Core thanks to dedicated parents and brave elected officials is reported every month in School Reform News, one of Heartland’s four public policy newspapers.
Freedom Rising
The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has put school choice on the front page of newspapers across the country once again, as he and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos promote national programs to advance school choice and promise to end federal support for Common Core. Newly elected state legislators and governors already are moving school choice legislation, long stalled by partisan opposition, across the finish line.
In January of this year, National School Choice Week broke all past attendance records with an astonishing 21,392 events taking place across all 50 states and total attendance exceeding 6.4 million people. It was, as its organizers say, “the world’s largest series of education-related events in US history.”
(Heartland played a small role by running full-page and half-page ads for the events in multiple issues of School Reform News leading up to the big week.)
The rallies for school choice continue. Earlier this month, on May 2, more than 1,500 students, parents, and grassroots leaders attended a rally at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus to celebrate school choice.
It can be difficult to recognize victories when one has fought many battles over the course of three decades that seemed to win so little ground. Even today, educational choice programs enroll too small a percentage of the total student population, and provide too little financial relief to parents who choose private schools, to allow us to declare victory over what Secretary of Education Bill Bennett famously called “the blob” way back in 1987.
But the numbers don’t lie, and neither do parents like Anita Belcher. School choice has defeated its foes both from without and within, and it has a new momentum that promises a brighter tomorrow.
It was a long time coming, but school choice has finally arrived.
Types of School Choice Programs
Vouchers
Vouchers give parents a portion of the public funding set aside for their children’s education to use to pay tuition at the private schools of their choice.
Education Savings Accounts
Education savings accounts (ESAs) act like vouchers but deposit the public funds into government-authorized savings accounts, which parents can then use to pay for a wider range of educational services.
Tax-Credit Scholarship Programs
Tax-credit scholarships allow corporations and individual taxpayers to receive full or partial tax credits when they donate to nonprofit organizations that pay for private school scholarships.
Individual Tax Deductions
Individual tax deductions allow parents to deduct some educational expenses from their state income taxes.
Charter Schools
Charter schools are public schools run by private entities that must compete with other schools for students and funding.
