Angry Parents = Better Schools

Good news! Parents are rising up to rescue our schools. The pandemic lockdowns exposed the reasons why so many of our schools are in trouble. Parents were shocked by what was and wasn’t in the curricula—most notably, the absence of courses that give kids an objective overview of our country’s history and our system of government, what used to be called “civics.”

Astonishingly, immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship are learning more about our history and government than American schoolchildren. Parents realized that they needed more input into how schools are run and what their children are being taught. They were also appalled at how the unions kept schools closed when there was no scientific justification for doing so. All this has given the school-choice movement a powerful thrust that ultimately promises to get our education system back on track.

There’s no excuse for American kids scoring so poorly on reading and math tests compared with their peers in other nations. Many kids who are barely literate are passed through the lower grades and on to high school.

Children’s prospects shouldn’t be limited by their Zip code.

Yet, despite local successes in such states as Florida and Arizona and cities such as Milwaukee, progress has been dishearteningly thwarted by powerful teachers’ unions that fiercely resist any challenge to their monopolies. For the most part, they have seriously limited the allowed number of charter schools, which can operate free from the clutches of the unions. No wonder. Kids in charter and other nongovern-ment schools routinely do better than their public-school peers.

But last year the dam started to break; 19 states either created or expanded school-choice options. This year more than 20 states have done so or are in the process of passing significant pro-school-choice legislation. And along the same lines, the number of homeschooling families has doubled.

What is also notable is the growing cry for school money to follow the kids, not the school, in the form of education savings accounts (ESAs). Money is deposited into these accounts to be used for various educational purposes, including private-school tuition. The number of states in 2021 that had various forms of ESAs went from five to eight.

West Virginia is leading the ESA charge. By 2026, ESAs could be available to all students. New Hampshire has passed its ambitious ESA program, dubbed Education Freedom Account.

The Ohio legislature has begun hearings on legislation offering school choice throughout the state. Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, is also pushing ambitious school-choice legislation.

Of course, resistance to these plans by teachers’ unions is fierce. At the behest of unions, Utah’s Republican governor is blocking a school-choice bill.

This brings us to an inconvenient truth: The teachers’ unions are not about educating kids but rather expanding administrative bloat, which means more dues payers. For example, one study found that between 1992 and 2014 real inflation-adjusted school spending went up 27%, while real teachers’ pay went down 2%.