What is it? School Choice
With school choice debates in states across the country, author Neal McCluskey helps us answer important questions such as, ‘what is it’ and ‘why is it controversial?’
The school choice debate has taken a front seat in recent years as states across the country enact legislation in favor of more educational options for students.
Voices against school choice have also risen and not just in the forms of Twitter posts and op-eds, but also in the opposition to such legislation, as is the case in Arizona.
WHAT IS SCHOOL CHOICE AND WHY IS IT SO CONTROVERSIAL? WATCH:
Some are unsure of what school choice is and how it would help resolve frustrations of parents and the issues that have become prevalent in the public school system, especially since COVID-19.
“An education system consistent with a free society has to be based on individual family choices of what they think is right in education. And the freedom for educators to educate as they think is right. And then people can freely come together on education that they agree on,” Neal McCluskey, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom and author of “The Fractured Schoolhouse” told Fox News.
He said that we see the need for school choice in battles that are going on right now, such as material covered in AP African American studies, how history is taught, gender identity issues and what books are allowed in the library.
There have been many battles between parents and school boards over public school curriculum choices since 2020. As these battles continue, the debate over school choice arises. (Getty Images)
What is school choice?
Although “school choice” can mean different things, the most basic form is when government education funds follow the child to the school of the family’s choice that best meets their needs.
School vouchers are one common form, where the “state money that would be spent on a child in a public school instead follows that child to a private school or to a public school,” McCluskey explained.
“Then we have lots of other types of school choice,” he said, listing charter schools, which allow more flexibility for the individual needs of children, and magnet schools, which are public schools that have “something special about it,” as two options.
“And then you often have choice within your school district” to choose the best public school for your family rather than just being assigned one based on location, McCluskey continued.
Why is school choice controversial?
Much of the opposition comes from people who want good things and “maybe value other things above liberty,” McCluskey told Fox News.
One of the original arguments against school choice is that “kids would not get educated and would not be molded into good citizens in a democracy unless the government took charge of education,” he said.
More modern opponents of school choice argue that it would lead to balkanization where “we all become kind of separated [and] we’re no longer one country or one community,” McCluskey explained.
McCluskey told Fox News that some opponents also claim that public schools are a “fundamental American thing,” but himself argues that they are not because “it took a very long time before public schooling became the norm.”
“There was always a substratum of people who were choosing private education,” he continued.
McCluskey said that “people feel we need a safety net” to ensure equal access to education, but “history suggests that is wrong.”
“Before public schooling, there was widespread education except where the government said, most egregiously to African Americans, ‘you can’t access education,’” McCluskey said.
McCluskey says public schools aren’t essential to the American education system. He adds that the education system must continue to change and adapt as it did when schools integrated students of different races. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Avoiding discrimination is another concern brought about by the opposition.
“It gets much stickier when we talk about choice of religious schools,” McCluskey said. “On an equality basis, the right answer is that religious people should be able to access religious schools without the government discriminating against them, including those schools operating consistent with their religious beliefs and convictions.”
“Opposition to school choice simply is not as powerful as the reasons to support it. First and foremost if we want a free, diverse, equal society, in other words, equal under the law, you have got to have education delivered by people freely choosing schools and educational options and teachers freely choosing what they teach and how they teach it rather than government control over everything,” he argued.
When decisions in school are decentralized, the “bad” decisions are not forced on everyone, such as when “the public schools segregated or prohibited African-Americans from accessing education,” he said.
“If you don’t allow free choice, you don’t get to have ideas compete to see which worked better,” McCluskey said. He furthered this argument to say that this freedom is also best for innovation within education.
McCluskey said school choice permits the freedom of choice for families to select a school based on what they believe is the most important purpose of education.
“The only right way to deliver education is not to impose a politically driven final idea of what is right or wrong but to let diverse people choose amongst diverse options,” he said.
When did school choice start?
“To know the history of school choice, you’ve got to know something about the history of public schools,” McCluskey explained. In Colonial times, there “wasn’t really this split between public and private. Governments would often help, what would be considered today, private schools, financially.”
“So there are lots of private options, and it wasn’t uncommon for the government to sort of supply some money to help those to run,” McCluskey said. “But the expectation was that you would choose the school.”
Over time, the idea that the government should run the schools began, developing into “common schools.” The idea, as McCluskey put it, was to put people into the “same mold.” Simultaneously, school choice developed as a distinct idea first with Roman Catholics, he said.
McCluskey says many parents want education for their kids that aligns with their values or religious beliefs. (Getty Images)
Modern-day school choice concepts emerged in the 1950s beginning with Milton Friedman who asserted that instead of the government making educational decisions for families, it should provide vouchers for them to use at the school of their choice.
At the same time, Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregation in schools unconstitutional. Backlash from the ruling resulted in some places wanting to shut down public schools and then give families money to go somewhere else to avoid the now-integrated schools.
“There was that misuse of freedom of school choice, but that has never been the primary driver for the modern school choice movement,” McCluskey said.
Starting in the sixties and the seventies, school choice began to receive bipartisan support based on the idea that low-income and minority students should have options. The 1990s saw the first modern school voucher programs in Milwaukee.
“More and more, the move has been, as we get into today, about how do we have an education system that is best for diverse free societies,” said McCluskey.
Where does the school choice debate stand today?
In 2021-2022, there were over 600,000 Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), vouchers and tax-credit scholarships for students, according to EdChoice. “And we’ve seen a huge increase in interest in it and in states passing bills since really 2021,” McCluskey said.
Then COVID-19 caused a renewed interest in the push for school choice. Without a way to reconcile all positions on schools reopening or remaining closed and masking of children, parents became aware of the issues present in the logistics of public schooling.
This was combined with frustration from parents “feeling like the school boards were not listening to them and sort of brushing them off,” McCluskey said.
Other events continued the conversation on school choice, such as George Floyd, critical race theory (CRT) policy debates and questions of gender identity.
Parents protest the presence of critical race theory in public school curriculums. (Getty Images)
Where is the school choice debate headed?
“In the short term, we are going to see more expansion of school choice,” said McCluskey. He mentioned states that have recently passed laws or have proposed legislation, including Iowa, Utah, Arkansas and Texas.
Before it is fully accepted, McCluskey predicted that there will be a pendulum swing that “energizes opposition” with “fewer states taking up legislation because people who are opposed to school choice will become more organized, louder and more energized on the issue.”
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This will result in “acceptance that education should be founded in freedom of parents and teachers” but there will be growing pains,” McCluskey said.
“The public needs to think about this and understand why public schools aren’t an essential institution,” McCluskey said. “They are inconsistent with American values of liberty and equality under the law.”
To hear more from McCluskey, click here.
