“We have school choice in Texas. If you don’t like your public school, you can go to private school or homeschool.”
That’s a familiar refrain from opponents of creating school choice programs, like vouchers or education savings accounts.
They are, of course, technically correct because those are legal alternatives to sending kids to public school. But it’s also disingenuous. They know those options have incredibly high barriers for most parents, especially middle- and working-class single parents.
If someone doesn’t have reasonable access to something, can it really be considered a choice? I suppose I legally have the right to drive a Rolls-Royce or Ferrari, but I can assure you that neither of those cars are in any reasonable way a “choice” for me.
Further, the purpose of choice is not just to have options for the sake of having options. Increasing choices puts upward pressure on the market leader to make services better and more affordable. Does anybody honestly believe public school officials feel any upward pressure to make education better right now, even as half of Texas students can’t read or do math on grade-level?
And this gets to the real point of the current debate over ESAs. The one thing both sides agree on is that if given the option – a real option – millions of parents would choose an education for their kid other than what their local public school is offering.
If the education establishment cared more about why that is and addressed the concerns of parents, we wouldn’t need to change the law to give parents a real choice.
For more on how parents lack educational choice in Texas, watch this.
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