As Many as One Million Children Will Have School Choice This Year

This is the dawning of the age of School Choice.

School bells are either already ringing or will begin ringing in the days and weeks ahead, however, a record number of children—especially those from low-income families—will be opting out of the traditional public schools.

This from hotair.com.

This year as many as 1 million children will participate in public school alternatives, including voucher programs, tuition tax credits, scholarship programs, and charter schools.

Why? Because so many families

are opting for better school alternatives.

And this mass exodus from the public schools as well as the fall of the reign of the teacher unions prima facie is evidence both the schools and the teacher unions are failing their communities and the children.

A new study by the Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania finds almost 4 of 10 public schools have a problem with violence, bullying, guns on the premises, and other infractions. How can students learn if they do not feel safe? This is a form of public-education child abuse, yes? But this harsh reality has not stopped the trillion-dollar education empire from striking back at school choice programs.

The Washington Post published a front-page hit piece last week on the highly touted Arizona choice program with as many as 300,000 children participating. Notedly, the program has become a model for the nation. But the Post complained because so many children are switching to private alternative schools, many of the failing public schools in Phoenix will have to close. One school highlighted for closing its doors is Roosevelt Elementary.

Antionette Nuanez, the school’s librarian told the Post:

It’s a grieving process for me.

Further:

It’s like a death.

But it is not “like a death” to the parents whose children have gained access to better schools. In a sense, they must be feeling liberated.

It is a head-scratcher why empowering low-income families with access to superior private schools is regarded as a bad thing. To analogize:

This would be like complaining that a popular Whole Foods grocery store has moved into town and now the crappy grocery store down the street has to go out of business.

To its credit, the Times acknowledged vouchers and other choice programs are forcing the public schools to clean up their act, serve the families in the community, and compete head-to-head for students. Well, DUH! That is the whole point. Raise the standards everywhere to end the curse of declining national test scores.

NOTE: Buried deep in the Post story, the trash-talking of vouchers is an admission:

[J]ust 13 percent of students (in the Roosevelt Elementary District) ranked proficient or better in math in 2023-24. [Amazingly,] more than half the schools are rated ‘A’ or ‘B’ by the state.

This news begs the question:

Which is worse: [T]hat there are schools where only [approximately] one of every seven [children] can do basic math, or that these schools still get an ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade[?]