What Is School Choice?

PREVIEW:

“School Choice” is a national movement that claims to increase education choices for parents.
In reality, when all education options are state funded, all choices are government choices.
True choice will be eliminated.

FULL FEATURE:

The School Choice movement is not, and has never been, about choice.

Here in Idaho, as in every state in the country, we already possess a robust right to choose from a wide assortment of education options for our children: public or charter schools (in person or online), private schools, homeschool, pod schools, and more. School choice legislation does not actually provide a single new educational choice, nor does it broaden any of the rights associated with any of these choices. It does, however, significantly reshape our educational choices and the freedom that we currently enjoy.

The school choice movement has mastered linguistic theft (altering the meaning of words as a way to manipulate people). School choice is NOT actually about choice! Rather, it is an education funding movement that asks the question, “Who should pay for my education choices?” Though those driving the movement refuse to say the quiet part out loud, the resounding answer is, “The taxpayer!”

Parents who choose to enroll their child in a private school or to homeschool are not forced to do so. They choose their education method knowing that they are financially responsible for the costs associated with that choice. In contrast, when parents jump on the school choice funding bandwagon, they shift the financial responsibility of their personal educational choices to all taxpayers. To their neighbors. To you. They add the burden of an entirely new education expense to everyone in the state.

These public funding mechanisms – vouchers, ESAs (Educational Savings Accounts), tax credits, public-private partnerships, etc. – vary a bit in terms of implementation and requirements, but they all serve one purpose: government funding of ALL school choices. And once all choices are consolidated under the government funded “single-payer system,” choice becomes limited to only those offered by the government. Public funding ultimately limits homeschool rights and choices.

We all know that what the government funds, the government is obligated to manage. It follows logically that any private or homeschool that partners with the state through funding will be subject to whatever regulations the government chooses to attach to those funds. Regulations typically start small: registration, reporting student data, or checking a box on a tax return. Once dependence on funding is entrenched, regulations expand: weekly check-ins with an approved educator, proof that academic milestones are being reached, limiting funding to secular curriculum, testing, and more. Such expansion of regulation is already happening in Arizona. Another example is public school “bridge” programs, which offer families money to teach their fully-enrolled students at home. These types of programs are seeing a rapid expansion of regulations, even here in Idaho.

The danger to private homeschoolers is that these regulations will cast a net beyond those taking funding, entangling anyone who chooses to educate their children outside the government-funded matrix. This isn’t speculation. Attempts have already been made in states where school choice legislation has passed to make unfunded homeschoolers subject to the same regulations as funded homeschoolers (and here). In Arkansas there is a push underway to require homeschoolers who receive public funding to meet all the same academic standards as public school students. The same year that Oklahoma passed its school choice legislation, there was a push to require privately funded homeschoolers to take the same tests as publicly funded homeschoolers and public school students. School choice funding has already been tried in other countries, where eventual loss of education freedom was the result (and here). These examples are just a glimpse behind the curtain.

The track record is that, by default or by design, privately funded education options become regulatorily indistinguishable from government funded education options. It is no exaggeration to assert that if the school choice movement succeeds, all true choice will be eliminated. Independence, autonomy, freedom, and parental rights will fall victim to the regulatory oversight already attached to all other public funding.

SAY NO TO PUBLIC FUNDING OF PRIVATE AND HOMESCHOOLS!