The EdChoice blog recently delivered some good news, specifically that the number of students using private choice programs increased by 25% last year. In fact, if you cobble together some previous years' data from the EdChoice ABCs of School Choice reports, the trend looks like:
Overall, a doubling of private choice participation since Arizona and West Virginia adopted universal policies in 2022 is looking like a good start. It is worth keeping in mind that surveys show that parents prefer private schools at approximately four times the rate that they enroll in them, and there are many miles to go on that front. The new program in Texas and the federal tax credit will provide additional sources of growth in the years ahead.
Meanwhile, over at Charter Folk, the not-so-good news. Jed Wallace has a striking post on the bifurcation of American education. Disadvantaged students have suffered the lion’s share of the decline in achievement since the pandemic struck.
This is your author’s observation rather than Wallace’s, but authorities adopting policies that teens can readily interpret as “attending school is not terribly important” have extremely negative consequences on absenteeism. Moreover, as best your humble author can tell, the “plan” for the public schools to do anything about it involves aging/dropping the academically damaged students out of the system.
In any case, Wallace puts his hammer on the head of an important nail regarding different reactions across red and blue states:
“It comes down to a topic I have written about several times here, which is whether teacher unions think they have overplayed their hands since the pandemic.
“My answer has been that in red states the answer is undoubtedly yes. Teacher union recalcitrance since the pandemic has sparked the Republican party to embrace private school choice, and that is resulting in seismic change happening in those states.
“In blue contexts, though, I have said that it’s a very different story. Thus far, Dems’ calculation has been that their hold on power is so unquestioned in blue states that they don’t really need to pivot on issues. They’ll be able to keep winning without making any adjustment at all.”
Ohio State University political scientist Vladimir Kogan, in his book “No Adult Left Behind,” argues: “We need a public school system that serves students, but we have created one that is governed at the behest of adults. We should not be surprised when it puts the interests of those adults first.”
Wallace is, correctly, I fear, noting that the politics of blue states lend themselves to more of the same on K-12. Wallace notes that this means more of this in Illinois:
If spending $93,787 per student at a high school with 0% proficiency in reading to go along with 0% proficiency in math is not your personal cup of tea, you might want to consider moving out of Illinois. It does not seem likely that you could find such a thing in any of the nearby states, two of which offer their citizens universal access to private choice programs:
Federalism allows people of divergent views to effectuate different policy goals, a healthy design feature of the American Constitution. If your state uses their monopoly on force to require you to pay for the schools like those listed above, opting out sounds like a splendid idea. Finding yourself forced to pay for those schools is far more than anyone should tolerate. Finding oneself forced to pay for them and being required to send your children to them is far, far worse. Illinois policymakers would never inflict this on their own children but seem entirely content to do so on thousands of their fellow citizens.
Depeche Mode once sang about “the grabbing hands grab all they can” but the same song noted “everything counts in large amounts.” For example, within the lifetimes of many reading this post, Illinois will have gone from having twice as many seats in Congress as Florida, to half as many (see below).
Everything counts in large amounts, indeed. The grabbing hands will be grabbing all they can, but your interests, dear reader, lie in putting yourself beyond their reach.
