School choice is on a roll; here are 3 ways to keep it going

Editor’s note: This commentary from Frederick Hess, a resident fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, appeared last week on foxnews.com.

As kids head back to school this fall, school choice is on a roll. Public support is impressive and broad-based, with more than 70% of parents supporting public charter schools, voucher programs, and education savings accounts.

State legislatures across the land have been adding and expanding school choice programs, with Arizona’s new education savings account program offering a vision of universal choice that would’ve been unimaginable even a few years ago.

The reason for all this isn’t hard to fathom. Two years of mediocre remote learning and school closures taught many parents that they couldn’t count on school districts when the chips were down. Schools seemingly bent on teaching kids that America is a “slavocracy” or talking to kindergarteners about gender fluidity have left other parents eager for alternatives. Divides over masking, vaccine mandates, and COVID-19 protocols forced other parents to seek out schools that addressed their concerns.

School choice provides a remedy for all of this. It gives families recourse when local schools drop the ball. It offers an out to families frustrated with district groupthink or inertia. It offers more options to families concerned that a school isn’t the right match for their kid.

Notice how practical all of this is. It’s not about ideology or abstractions. It’s about all the ways in which empowering parents makes it possible for them to put their children in schools that respect their needs, reflect their values, and take care of their kids.

There’s an important lesson here, especially as the pandemic recedes. After all, while these prosaic benefits have always existed, these kinds of appeals have rarely been front-and-center in choice advocacy. Why is that?

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BY Special to NextSteps