It’s been a sizable year for school choice in the United States. As of now, nine states have passed legislation to expand school choice programs or create programs from scratch. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Dakota, West Virginia, Iowa, and Oklahoma have welcomed school choice with open arms following a year of parents screaming for schools to open, complaints about curriculums, and students getting left behind.
The movement for school choice has more support than ever with 71% of voters supporting programs for school choice. And who can blame them? Students have faced instability in the classroom (or virtual classroom) for over a year. Meanwhile, there has been a clear correlation between the size and power of teachers unions and the unwillingness of schools to open, leading us to question the motives behind schools remaining closed.
Parents are mad. They’ve listened in on Zoom classrooms only to discover Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory, and Queer Theory being peddled. On other days, parents have done the majority of the teaching while not receiving support from tax dollars that should be benefiting their children or training to do so. All the while, they’ve watched the three-ring circus in D.C., knowing for most of the year that an end to the madness was not right around the corner.
Fortunately, if COVID restrictions were good for anything, they opened voter’s eyes to the man behind the curtain, so to speak. While their kids were home and missing out on socialization, curriculum, and sports, they watched the same teachers protesting the return to the classroom go on beach vacations in Cabo.
School choice is picking up steam and it requires continued support from parents and individuals because everyone has a dog in this fight. The free market is not the enemy of education and, in fact, it contributes to higher test scores and overall achievement for students. It also boasts diversified employment and higher-paying opportunities for educators.
Why does this matter if you don’t have children being impacted by the power struggles in public schools?
If you care about our society, our values, our constitution, you have to care about school choice. These are voters. They will determine your future, our future. And for decades, the left side of the aisle has recognized that important fact. The indoctrination happening in public education didn’t happen by accident. It happened by design and, objectively, it worked. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have an entire generation of parents telling their children that they’re inherently racist or must go by grammatically incorrect pronouns.
To correct the future downward spiral of policy being enacted by the current administration, we have to care about what children are being taught now. We have to make room for critical thinking and we do so by offering school options that cater to our kids and not the pull of a strong teachers union where politics take precedence.
