States see skyrocketing demand for school choice

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Parents are so eager to get their children out of failing public schools that states are having to scramble to provide the necessary administrative program support and supply of education alternatives.

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States that have implemented universal school choice are facing an unexpected challenge: The demand for school choice is higher than anticipated.

Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah all have implemented some type of universal school choice legislation, opening up their school scholarship programs to students across their states. While the data isn’t available as yet on Indiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah, one thing is clear in the first four states: Parents are making a run on school choice opportunities like it was “Tickle Me Elmo” during the 1996 Christmas shopping season.

While most states that had school choice started by limiting scholarships to low-income students, these nine states have relaxed or eliminated income restrictions, though low-income and disabled students are still prioritized. These latest programs allow parents, who pay taxes to fund schools, to take tax dollars and use them towards most educational expenses, including homeschooling costs, private school tuition, tutoring, and more.

School choice is hugely popular, regardless of political party, ethnicity, geographic location, and other factors. Yet it seems that states weren’t prepared for just how popular it really is. While these states allocated funds in the budget for school choice vouchers, the demand is vastly exceeding the amount allocated.

Arizona was the first state to implement school choice, and it was highly successful. The program resulted in education gains and higher test scores for both students who left public schools and the students who remained in their original public schools. As a result, the state was the first to expand its program. Parents were so excited for the opportunity to get their child into a better school that nearly 69,000 scholarships had been awarded by October 14. That’s more scholarships than lawmakers projected for the entire school year.

Arizona father Aaron Galaz said his son was in a public school where he wasn’t being challenged enough, and Galaz was also concerned about the lessons on gender identity his son was being taught. So he used Arizona’s Empower Scholarship Account to send his son to a private religious school.

“I work and I pay all those taxes the same as everyone else. We as parents can have a choice as to where those funds go,” Galaz stated.

State House Speaker Ben Toma said the state’s education budget is on track to have a $77 million surplus that could cover the additional vouchers. “Arizona will continue to responsibly fund students, not systems,” he argued.

Concerns over the budget aren’t bothering Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman. Though a Columbus Dispatch analysis found that the $398 million allocated for school choice was likely exceeded in September, the scholarships still cost less than one percent of the state’s budget. “There’s plenty of money there to pay for these,” he said.

While budgetary issues may not be a major concern, program administration and supply of education alternatives are. While Florida families with disabled children who received the state’s school choice vouchers called the program a “godsend,” they are very frustrated with the scholarship funding organization Step Up for Students. Parents have started a review campaign of the organization to make their grievances heard before a special session of the legislature on November 6 to consider putting more money into the system.

Parent Katie White wrote, “My special needs kids have used the scholarship for years and have been greatly helped. This year, Step Up for Students has completely stepped ON our students and our wonderful therapists.”

She explained the many problems, such as the “call center gives misinformation, phone hold time is often longer than an hour. Their ‘new’ system is full of issues. (Special needs) and (home-school) parents are waiting weeks for reimbursements, and they ignore the rules set forth for them by (the Florida Department of Education). It’s a shame parents have to deal with this monopoly.”

Parents are also angry that Step Up for Students has been sending US Bank gift cards, rather than depositing the funds to families. US Bank does not have branches in Florida and many parents are having difficulty accessing the money promised to them.

Step Up for Students spokesman Scott Kent says he’s aware of the complaints and says Step Up is working to fix them. Regarding the US Bank gift cards, Kent stated, “It is not fiscally responsible for [Step Up] to have the banking information for the families of over 350,000 students. Further, it would be difficult to quickly resolve all the user errors with bank account information.”

Kent said the complaints are being investigated and “we will be rolling out a new reimbursement method that responds to those concerns.”

He also said Step Up is working to try to meet the dramatic increase in demand. He said Step Up has worked to vet thousands of applicants as it tries to manage a 400 percent increase in education savings accounts since last year.

“In anticipation of this increase, Step Up added more than 200 customer service representatives. However, we acknowledge that not everyone has received the level of service they expected. We take that very seriously and are working overtime to resolve every one of these issues as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile, the issue of supply is contributing to resistance to school choice in some areas, including rural Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott, R, is seeking to implement universal school choice. Some claim that public schools are cultural centers of the small communities and that there aren’t many private school options for students in small towns. Private schools, however, claim that they are ready and willing to expand into rural and low-income areas if the state passes school choice.

For example, Promise Academy opened in Tyler, Texas, almost a decade ago with the mission of providing low-income families with a Christian education. Most parents pay only $100 each month for the school year. The majority of students are black or Hispanic, and 94 percent are low-income. If school choice is passed, Promise Academy is ready to expand.

“Promise Academy is right now on a waitlist in two of our grade levels, and the desire to serve all those kids is there,” co-founder Sarah Cumming stated.

The debate over school choice is over. No matter what poll you look at, no matter Democrat or Republican — parents want school choice. It’s not hard to understand why.

As the Freedom Center has written on numerous occasions, public schools aren’t just underachieving, they are borderline criminally failing students and wasting taxpayer dollars.

Take Pittsburgh Public Schools. In 2022, math scores across the district were down more than 30 percent, with 0 students at five Pittsburgh elementary schools testing proficient in math and just 2 percent of students testing proficient in math at another five K-5 schools.

So how does the school board plan to solve this issue? On October 25, it voted to spend $50,000 on a consultant that teaches teachers “how to replace ‘white supremacy culture practices’ in math instruction with methods that center on the “‘wellness of students of color,’” as well as “to grow their antiracist math praxis collaboratively in pedagogy and instruction.”

When students can’t read or perform basic mathematic equations, but they know how to protest and change their gender, parents rightfully see that as a problem and a failure.

For many, it’s hard to picture teachers and public schools being like this. Maybe they have happy memories of their time in school or of a teacher who was a loving influence on their life and challenged them to be better. Perhaps they go to church with teachers who are godly people who would never teach a child that he or she was born in the wrong body or read their students a book about minors having sex.

Those things can be true, and at the same time, we as a society can still need school choice. It’s time to face reality. The Norman Rockwell image of public schools isn’t what our public schools are anymore, and though there are still many great teachers, they are now dwarfed by the number of zealots populating the occupation, teachers’ unions, local school boards, and the gargantuan bureaucratic and power-hungry U.S. Department of Education.

If you don’t know by now, teachers’ unions aren’t for students, but they aren’t really for teachers either. They are political organizations who exist to horde money and power. They are left-wing political groups that want to trap your child in a failing public school in order to maintain their monopoly on education — and the billions in taxpayer dollars that go with it.

While they keep your child in public school, they will teach them how to be an antiracist, an LGBT ally, or to mutilate their bodies, as well as to advance the left’s ultimate desire, which is to separate students from their parents and raise up dutiful children who will align with the left and who will never support homeschooling, private schools, or any form of school choice.

Monopolies are never good for the consumer — they’re only good for the monopolies. The United States has anti-trust laws in place to break up monopolies because we realize that they harm the public and they prevent other businesses from breaking into the market and excelling.

Public education is currently a monopolistic behemoth that uses taxpayer dollars to further bloat its coffers. While the U.S. has broken up monopolies before, the one before us now is the most dangerous. Why would we continue to allow an education system that has so totally failed in its most basic purpose to have full control over the future of our children and thus our nation?

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