WATCH: Why Public Schools Should Want School Choice

Most Americans believe in school choice, which allows parents to choose where their children go to school. According to a recent poll, 72% of respondents support the concept of giving parents this right. Surprisingly, this idea cuts across partisan interests, with 82%, 68%, and 67% of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, respectively, favoring it.

Despite the general public’s support for this policy, interest groups with vested interests in existing education models are vehemently against it. They claim that diverting resources and pupils from public schools would leave these schools with the most difficult or expensive-to-educate students, which would further exacerbate their funding shortfalls. School choice opponents believe that private and charter schools do not have to take all students and, therefore, walk away from their responsibility to serve society’s disadvantaged.

Although school choice opposition is a dominant force in states such as Texas, New York, and California, Mandy Drogin, of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, suggests that there is an urgent need for change. She notes that nearly 75% of Texas’s 8th-graders are not proficient in reading and mathematics according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. She further comments that 60% of students cannot perform math at grade level, while nearly 50% cannot read at grade level, based on Texas’s own assessments.

Statewide school choice programs have been implemented in states such as Florida and Iowa, resulting in significant educational improvements, particularly for low-income students. These states were initially regarded to be in the bottom half of states in terms of educating such students in 2002, but they had climbed to the top three by 2019.

Drogin believes that the mere presence of competing schools leads to significant reforms in existing public schools. Instead of abandoning public schools, parents are motivated to stay there, causing exceptional schools to rise to the challenge, raising their standards, and improving their test scores to retain their students and funding. By choosing schools freely, parents promote and facilitate school competition, leading to significant improvements in academic performance.

Watch the video below to learn more: