In response to plunging test scores that have been made worse by the pandemic, states across the country have been implementing school choice reforms that are making public funding of schools portable.
In October 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, informally known as the “nation’s report card,” revealed that test scores nationwide have plunged to the lowest levels in the last 30 years in reading, while recording the biggest drop ever in math since the assessments began in 1990.
Some states are implementing reforms by creating education scholarship accounts, or ESAs. Such funding allows students to take public dollars out of failing school systems and use them for tuition and other education expenses via private schools, homeschooling, and tutoring.
ESAs are primarily targeted at lower-income students in households that cannot afford tutors or that need tuition assistance in order to afford private schools.
But universal ESAs that are available to students regardless of household income are becoming an increasingly popular option for some states.
As of March, there are 11 states with some type of ESA program, EducationWeek reported.
The school choice nonprofit EdChoice is calling 2023 “the year of universal school choice,” as 31 state legislatures are considering bills to either expand or start school choice programs, many of which include ESA options.
“Parents aren’t asking for school choice, they’re demanding it. Many states and schools will get left behind if they’re not receptive to the school choice movement, because it’s not stopping anytime soon,” Darrell Jones, president of the Stanley M. Herzog Charitable Foundation—which concentrates on Christian education—told The Epoch Times in a statement.
Lawmakers in states as diverse as West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, and Florida are listening to parents, said one expert.
“When you see a state like West Virginia adopt an education savings account that is available to nearly every child in the state, … lawmakers and families in Arizona say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we have the nation’s first education savings account program. There’s no reason that these options should not be available to the low-income children outside of Tucson,’” Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
The general result has been a land rush business in ESAs, he said, with Florida, Iowa, Utah, and Arkansas following West Virginia.
“I think what we can kind of take from this is that policymakers who believe that conservative solutions are the best answer to the assigned school system are looking to school choice as an indicator of their commitment to conservative answers,” added Butcher.
Impact on Upcoming Elections
Experts who spoke with The Epoch Times said that these reforms will have a large impact on federal races, including the 2024 presidential race, regardless of whether the candidates believe in conservative solutions.
“First of all, I’ll especially guarantee that this will be a major issue in the 2024 presidential race,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Epoch Times.
“Second, when they reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, you will see a big move towards really opening up the system everywhere,” he added.
Gingrich said that one of the driving forces behind the school choice movement is the renewed emphasis on parental rights in education, which he says he believes carries about an 84 percent approval rating.
One national pollster agrees with that general assessment, but would not cite specific numbers.
“The pandemic really opened up eyes for what happens in classrooms for parents all across the country. As a parent myself, it was concerning,” Trevor Smith, chief research officer for WPA Intelligence, told The Epoch Times. “The pandemic was the catalyst to the change.”
Smith said that candidates across the country are busy crafting their positions on school choice no matter what level of government that they seek to represent.
School Choice a Wedge Issue for Women
The issue has the potential to drive a wedge in an important voting block for Democrats, one expert said.
Today, women are evenly divided between the abortion issue and school choice, political commentator and former strategist Dick Morris told The Epoch Times.
“I think that while the abortion issue is the focus of single women, there is an increasing movement among married women with children to focus on school choice. And I think that that’s going to be fundamental,” Morris said.
Smith at WPA said that while he hasn’t polled the numbers, he generally agreed with that assessment. Morris also broke down the demographics.
“When I say unmarried women, it makes no difference if they are unmarried, widowed or divorced or separated. And if they’re married, it makes no difference if they’re married or just cohabitating,” Morris added.
Both Morris and Gingrich cited the threat that ESAs pose to one of the biggest players in federal education policy—teachers unions—as a key driver of the 2024 campaigns.
Allowing students to take federal dollars out of failing public school systems and move them to competitive schools could be a game changer, they both agreed, really weakening the power of teachers unions.
“I think we have to realize the seminal role, the founding role that teachers unions play in the leftist revolution going on [in] the country. The ‘woke’ culture starts with teachers in elementary school, with students nurtured by them until they go to left-wing colleges,” Morris said.
Freedom Versus Bureaucracy
Gingrich noted that public employee unions, such as teachers unions, have created a dangerous schism today that looks a lot like the country’s antebellum period, prior to the Civil War.
“What you’re seeing is almost a little bit scary in that it’s like the 1840s and 50s, where the free states and the slave states were drifting apart,” Gingrich said. “Today, you’re seeing the left wing bureaucratic cities and states are drifting in one direction, and everybody else is going in a different direction.”
Gingrich predicted that in the next few years, 50 to 60 percent of the country will have ESA school choice programs, while the entrenched bureaucratic teachers unions will control the rest.
He said the outcome would be both “really bad” and “really expensive” for schools in the deepest Democrat cities, still dominated by teachers unions.
“What you have is this very deep difference about the nature of America, with most—but not all—Democrats still trapped in a unionized bureaucratic model, where the government gets to coerce you,” said Gingrich, “and the Republicans and some Democrats increasingly moving towards a model of freedom, where you have real choices, and you have real power.”