American Federation for Children director of research Corey DeAngelis in a Friday interview with Fox Business extended a “formal thank you” to the American Federation of Teachers for being the driving force in the upswing of parents who are investigating school choice options.
Union posturing, DeAngelis hypothesizes, can be credited with “pushing families down the path of school choice,” resulting in the exodus of 1.5 million students from the public school system this past year and sparking a three-fold increase in the number of families who are homeschooling their children.
Contributing to the surge, DeAngelis notes, 17 states either have expanded school choice programs or have enacted new school choice programs aimed at funding students and families rather than systems.
Here is an excerpt from the interview:
School choice programs are an equalizer … We spend over $16,000 per student per year in the government school system. Why not give that money to the parents?
It’s time to free our children from the government school system and the teachers union. We should not have to rely on the decisions of the teacher union bosses … the decisions should be up to parents, and the best way to do that is to fund the student directly.
You can watch the interview here.
