School choice

The school choice movement seeks to improve education by allowing parents the right to choose alternatives to public school for their children. Vouchers that enable parents to take their tax money and spend it on educational alternatives are often advocated to achieve this. It was initially championed by economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose in the late 1960s.

In 2025, Texas enacted school choice as pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott and celebrated by his signing of SB2 in May:

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Senate Bill 2 (Creighton/Buckley) establishes an Education Savings Account program allowing eligible students to direct funding toward their choice of preapproved educational providers and services such as private school tuition, instructional materials, and educational therapies. With $1 billion in funding for the 2026-2027 school year, the program will be the largest day-one launch in the country.

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In 2023, as part of a trend of a growing school choice movement in the United States (particularly post conavirus pandemic), 20 states in the United States passed school choice legislation which has the potential to raise the quality of education in the United States due to more competition in schooling raising the quality of the education. According to Investopedia: "Education tends to raise productivity and creativity, as well as stimulate entrepreneurship and technological breakthroughs. All of these factors lead to greater output and economic growth." See: Labor productivity rate of the United States

As of 2007, school choice is available only in very limited ways and only to a tiny percentage of the population. Wisconsin and Ohio have had very small programs. Florida has a voucher program and also has an online alternative to brick and mortar public school, known as Florida Virtual School.

In addition to vouchers for private school and homeschooling options, along with charter schools (mainly in larger cities), some school districts offer a choice, for those who choose the public school system, in which public school their children will attend. This is sometimes called open enrollment. Open enrollment can be limited to only schools within a district (the school district in Garland, Texas, has had open enrollment at the middle and high school levels for several decades) or may also cross over to neighboring districts (such as smaller ones neighboring larger ones). School districts in Florida have an open enrollment system although traditional dictatorship still applies to the school bus system, and those who choose to attend a school where buses are unavailable are required to find alternate transportation. In regions where open enrollment does not exist in public schools, a communist style dictatorship determines what school public school students will attend, which can be particularly a problem where homeschooling is prohibited or unfeasible and no good private schools exist or are affordable.

A Washington Times editorial explains:

School choice is about as popular with teachers’ unions as crosses are at a convention of vampires. Big Labor only cares about maintaining the guarantee of lifetime employment without accountability based on performance. Nothing says “failure” more loudly than a bunch of students packing their book bags to head elsewhere.

Betsy DeVos, U.S. President Donald Trump Secretary of Education, has called the school choice movement an attempt to "empower" parents to find good schools for their children, whether they be traditional public schools in other neighborhoods, charter schools, virtual schools or private institutions.

A true film regarding impoverished single mother-turned-activist Virginia Walden and her campaign for school choice in the 2000s, named "Miss Virginia," was released in 2019.

Not all opponents of school choice are liberal: fundamentalists commonly oppose school choice (specifically, the use of vouchers for private schools) out of concern that it would give the government the legal right to dictate what the school -- and, possibly, the sponsoring church -- can and cannot teach in its curriculum (e.g. that homosexuality is a sin). Thus, even in places where school choice exists, their schools will not take public vouchers for that reason. Another concern raised by opponents involves faith-based schools, which (legally and constitutionally) can refuse to enroll a student for any reason (the most common reasons being that the school isn't equipped for "learning challenged" students - most schools bill themselves as "college preparatory" - or that the student (or his/her parent(s)) aren't considered "Christian" as the school defines such, an example being a fundamentalist school refusing to admit a student who attends a Catholic church). This extends to race as well: many such schools use "disciplinary risk" - a term which usually means whatever reason the school wants it to mean - to keep out non-White children (with only a few allowed to enroll so as to not give the appearance of segregation).

School choice advocate John Stossel on school choice

Videos:

• School Choice: Competition Finally Comes to Education, Upsetting Teacher Unions and Bureaucrats, John Stossel, 2025
• Classic Stossel: School Choice, John Stossel, 2020
• John Stossel - School Choice, John Stossel, 2017
• "Stupid in America" with John Stossel, 2016
• John Stossel on the Successes of Freedom in Education, 2012
• Excellence in Action 2008 - John Stossel: Stupid in America, 2008

See also

• Charter schools
• Homeschooling

External Links

• Why Good Teachers Want School Choice. PragerU.
• Why Special Needs Students Want School Choice. PragerU.
• School Choice Saved My Life. PragerU.
• Mother Knows Best: Why I Fight for School Choice. PragerU.
• School Choice Now

Book:

• Book: Escape From Uncle Sam's Plantation