“History will show that this is the downfall of public education.”
That was Florida Sen. Perry Thurston (D-Fort Lauderdale) last week, responding to legislation that would expand opportunities and provide flexibility for low-income families. Many opponents of school choice share his sentiments. It’s a misconception of choice used to deny equity in education to the country’s most disenfranchised populations – low-income and Black families.
In recognition of Black History Month, we must take a historical approach to analyze the long and hard struggle for equity and equality in public education for Blacks.
The first recorded notion of a free public school was in the 17th century, and it was later proposed to use taxpayer dollars for education long before our country was founded. This was also during a time when the first enslaved Africans were shipped to Virginia in 1619 and threatened with death if they even attempted to become literate. As a Black man, I feel compelled to highlight that this injustice, coupled with over three centuries of systemic oppression, should have been deemed the downfall of public education.
Too often, opponents of education choice deny or ignore the fact that a government-funded public education system was established to exclude enslaved Africans, women and low-income families. In fact, public education originally was established to teach Puritan values and reading the Bible to sons of white, elite families.
This newly created system of public education required an additional 350 years to ensure Blacks could even attend school with their white counterparts, with a government content with “separate but equal.” There was no choice. There were no options for an equitable school experience. Blacks were forced to learn in schools with insufficient financial support and negligible resources. This gave birth to the opportunity gaps we see today.
As a result, Blacks had to use ingenuity and scarce resources to establish schools, including historically Black colleges and universities to address the growing need for knowledge in agriculture. They were created out of necessity, not choice. Prominent Black leaders from these institutions, such as W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, had to advocate for equity and equality rights in a public education system that should have been afforded to them.
This is not entirely different from the education choice advocacy we see today. Black and low-income families are advocating to lawmakers for an equal opportunity in education.
The government has had more than 400 years to address the funding equity for predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods, and the quality of the education has suffered. Conversely, government funding combined with education choice has yielded positive results. A 2019 Urban Institute study found that tax-credit scholarship students are up to 43% more likely than their public-school peers to enroll in four-year colleges, and up to 20% more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.
In addition, a 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research of the impact of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship found positive impacts even on public schools – that as the program for students in private schools expanded, students who remained in public schools also benefited: “In particular, higher levels of private school choice exposure are associated with lower rates of suspensions and absences, and with higher standardized test scores in reading and math.”
But opponents ignore this because it demonstrates that when parents have a sense of empowerment, they are more engaged, and their kids have more positive experiences and success in school. Choice provides parents the opportunity to find schools that best match their children’s learning needs.
Florida school districts provide public education to the students within their assigned zones. It’s a right established by the state constitution. But the assumption that traditional public education customizes – or has ever customized – the learning experience for every child it serves is misguided.
In his eloquent response to Sen. Thurston at the Feb. 3 Senate Education Committee hearing, Jon Arguello, a member of the Osceola County School Board, argued that not every public school can meet the unique needs of every child in the district – just as the senator cannot satisfy the needs of every voter in his district. Some students need options and flexibility in their learning experience.
Unfortunately, education choice opponents will have you believe that only traditional public education can ensure that all students are adequately served with resources that are equitably distributed. The unfortunate reality is that the areas where these families reside are not equal, and neither are the resources.
That’s a big reason why 1.5 million students in Florida are exercising some form of choice. Families have explored charter schools, magnet schools, and voucher programs that have provided more options for students.
Our society has such a sordid history of discriminatory practices and systemic racism in education that it’s absurd to decry parental choice as the “downfall of public education.” For many low-income and Black Americans, the system has never had anywhere to go but up. The populations that historically have benefited from public education will continue to be successful, because they already have the means to exercise choice.
We must level the playing field so that every child will have the opportunity to succeed regardless of socio-economic status.
