School Choice Gets Lip Service at Republican Debate

GOP presidential hopefuls should be more clear about the school choice policies they support.

During Wednesday's Republican debate, there was one thing that just about every candidate could agree on: School choice is a great policy, and more school choice will help pull American schoolchildren out of their post-COVID test score slump.

"We need to make sure that we have school choice so there's competition," said former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. "We need to move all the programs from the federal government down to the states, and let states decide what education looks like."

When asked about his record on education in New Jersey, former Gov. Chris Christie bragged about creating "more charter schools and more Renaissance schools and more public school choice."

"We didn't just talk about universal school choice," boasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. "We enacted universal school choice."

Except no one defined what school choice is.

While it's a good sign that school choice is getting so much airtime, it risks becoming just another political buzzword if Republicans don't explain what it actually means and which school choice policies they support.

School choice can be used to describe just about any policy that makes it easier for parents to send their children to schools other than their local zoned public schools. School choice can range from conservative proposals like open-enrollment policies, in which parents can enroll their children in other school districts if those districts have extra seats, to expansive measures in Florida's law, which lets all families who opt out of public schools get a cut of the funds that would have gone to local schools to use toward private school tuition.

Forty-three states have open enrollment, though some make it prohibitively difficult for parents to participate. Forty-five states allow charter schools (publicly funded and tuition-free schools that are privately run), and 15 states have private school vouchers, though most programs are means-tested.

Poor and middle-class families should have a chance to do what wealthy families have always done: choose where their children go to school. And when you force public schools to compete with other options, it pushes them to improve their offerings and better serve their students.

Since pandemic-era school closures, that sell has been even easier to make. Not only has homeschooling increased by 30 percent immediately following the pandemic (with private schools experiencing more modest gains), but high-profile efforts to enact generous voucher programs have been successful in Florida and Arizona.

As a result, national support for the concept of "school choice" is high. Recent polling by the American Federation for Children found that 71 percent of Americans support the concept of school choice, including 66 percent of Democrats.

While supporting school choice is clearly a winning strategy for Republicans—and Democrats—going beyond vague platitudes will help more Americans take their positive view of the concept out of the abstract and into statehouses.

Comments

[mad.casual]

LOL
Except no one defined what school choice is.
Ctrl+f "school choice is":
school choice is clearly a winning strategy for Republicans

How many years did you work how hard to get your journalisming degree only to write an article faulting others for not defining school choice only to do so yourself?

The funniest part is this "Sober Emma's" depth of thought.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Her complaint is weak tea, but valid. The funny part to me is imagining how she'd report the Dem debates on the same subject: she'd drag in Trump and the Repubs. Here, she could have said the Repubs are better than the Dems, but chose not to, which at least keeps TFA on topic, sort of.

"The Allied armies accepted the German surrender, but didn't define it in enough detail for my liking."

"Thomas Edison demonstrated a wax cylinder voice recorder, but didn't disclose his plans for the future."

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD 2: Steampunk Boogaloo]

I’m guessing little Emma is a straight democrat ticket voter.

[Wizard4169]

Yeah, anybody who dares to criticize the GOP must be sucking Dem cock. You'd really think that anyone pretending to be a libertarian would be smarter than to buy into the whole TEAM bit.

[Wizard4169]

And her actual point was the the GOP strategy was to pay lip service to school choice without saying exactly what they meant by that. Here's a quarter, go buy yourself some reading comprehension.

[Overt]

Except by her own admission, the GOP- including many of these candidates- has done far more than lip service in the name of School Choice.

It's a debate for fuck's sake. You are given 30 - 90 seconds to make your pitch. Describing specific policy differences between interdistrict transfers and full vouchers is a bit much to ask. Her complaint is petty and pointless. Instead of using it as an opportunity to actually compare the candidates, she instead uses it as a slight against all candidates.

[JesseAz]

Most intelligent people know school choice largely occurs at the state level and the GOP doesn't largely want frderalization of schools.

This batch of intelligent people does not include you nor Emma.

[mad.casual]

Here’s a quarter, go buy yourself some reading comprehension.

Without a definition from her to compare and contrast as to what exactly constitutes pointless lip service, her, and your, opinions are even more pointless and less relevant lip service.

You can keep the quarter, I'd hate for you to have sacrifice half your pay for your stupid comment.

[Jerryskids]

The thing that bugged me is that nobody asked the salient question: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? What the fuck does a candidate for president's stand on school choice have to do with anything? Abolish the Department of Education (among many other departments) and leave education up to the states. Why has everything got to be a federal government problem, or even a government problem at all? Find some other God to worship you fucking barbarians.

[Longtobefree]

Lived experience; I got asked that tree question in a job interview (for a technical position), I replied "The kind that leaves", and walked out.

[JasonT20]

Poor and middle-class families should have a chance to do what wealthy families have always done: choose where their children go to school.

Wealthy families send their kids to private schools with tuition that dwarfs whatever their state and local governments spend per pupil. Are public schools spending around $10k per student like Florida? Then the best private schools that the wealthy send their kids to will have tuition that approaches $20k. Maybe you live in a high cost of living deep blue state like NY or Massachusetts that spends $20k or more. Then the wealthy send their kids to elite private schools with tuition in the $40-50k range.

Private schools with tuition that is comparable to public school spending or less don't have students from wealthy families. They have students from middle class families that find a way to pay the tuition and students from lower income families that receive scholarships. And those private schools are almost always religious schools. Some school choice advocates clearly support vouchers because they want more kids going to religious schools. (See Betsy DeVos)

[Overt]

"Wealthy families send their kids to private schools with tuition that dwarfs whatever their state and local governments spend per pupil."

Wealthy families have choices. Contrary to the simplistic scenarios you offered up, a wealthy family in Pasadena California might:

1) Spend a premium to buy a house in South Pasadena, which has better public schools.
2) Attend one of numerous private schools in the city that offer tuition that is competitive with what PUSD spends for its shit education.
3) Spend money on various tricks to get their kid into a lottery with one of the two "good" schools in the PUSD.
4) Attend a crappy elementary and spend their time and money making up for the education by volunteering and hiring tutors.

All of these are choices that rich people have that middle class parents do not. Broad school choice and vouchers would give middle class families the ability to get into better districts or attend a better private school that has already demonstrated that it can provide quality education at a cost competitive with public.

Wealthy people will always have more options than less wealthy people. But Public Education removes choices that those less wealthy people could enjoy.

[JasonT20]

The other thing that you never see Republicans talk about with school choice is how they will ensure that students will be learning. Accountability in public education as we know it today was championed by Republicans. (Especially Jeb! and George W. Bush) But you don't see any Republicans talking about accountability in school choice programs. The Florida voucher system has virtually nothing. The students using them don't take the tests that public school students do. That is why there have been voucher schools run out of strip malls where students are just given canned homeschool packets and babysat by people without any education training, sometimes not even high school diplomas.

[Overt]

The funny thing about unrestricted School Choice is that it includes the only accountability that matters: accountability to the child and the parent.

These complaints about accountability are just cynical distractions by people who want to preserve the terrible public school system. Jason's contempt for accountability on Public School Systems is palpable- there wasn't a single leftist who didn't bitch and moan about "teaching to the test" when NCLB was passed. But now, oh boy, do they really want accountability when money starts walking away. Riiiight.

It is true, creating a national testing regime for schools was a joke and counter-productive. Government is terrible at defining "quality" and even more terrible at measuring it. Not only is the government too slow to create testing regimes that can't be gamed or perverted by parasites, it is morally debatable whether or not one can actually apply a single definition of quality to the tens of millions of individual students in the US.

The GOP made a major mistake in tying funding to national test regimes. Instead, the better plan is to give parents the money, and let them hold whichever school they want accountable for educating their children. Over time, those schools and parents will figure out the best way to describe and quantify the value of those schools.

[Longtobefree]

Could you please repost your link about the lack of testing?
It seems to have dropped off the comment.

[JasonT20]

fldoe.org/schools/school-choice/private schools/choosing-a-private-school.stml

That is the link to the advise the FLDOE gives to parents on how to choose a private school.

Note how it explains that private schools make their own academic accountability systems. Parents are encouraged to look into that, but the state doesn’t collect and make that information publicly available.

[JesseAz]

Holy fuck is this ignorant and stupid. Have you seen the test scores of the public schools you are defending?

Charters and private schools still have standardized testing. What argument are you even attempting?

Markets would make school actually accountable by allowing bad ones to fail.

[TJJ2000]

I like the one's who promise to end the UN-Constitutional D.O.E.

[Minadin]

I mean, I'll take the lip service and all the actual progress being made in red states over the 'school choice is racist, nevermind that I send my own kids to private school' stuff we get from the other side.

[Overt]

This article is yet another example of how bad the editing at Reason has become. The relatively inexperienced Ms Camp should be furious that the editors let her put out this amateur, disingenuous, hot take rather than produce a substantive article that delivers value to the libertarian cause.

For the record, the article above is the type of sneering invective you would get from a lefty watching the debate with you at a bar. "Sure, they all SAY they are for school choice, but what do they really mean?!"

We know what they really mean- most candidates have made several stump speeches and some even have actual legislative record here. And the JOB of a Journalist is supposed to be that they go out, look at the records of those candidates, and summarize exactly that information.

It is utterly disingenuous to say that DeSantis (Or Christie) referring to his actual record is merely "paying lip service" and offering "vague platitudes". And it is an absurd premise that a candidate on a crowded debate stage can get much more substantive than that in their 30 - 90 second response.

Let's just say VR and DeSantis are actually interested in courting the libertarian vote. They have both given interviews to Stossel in the past, so that shows they at least are paying attention. Now they read this article that treats DeSantis- champion of school choice- in the exact SAME bucket as VR, who (as near as I can tell) has no platform on his website, and has made no concrete statements about the subject. Reason has essentially stated, "Fuck you GOP- deliver us everything we want, or do nothing, we'll slur it all as meaningless platitudes".

Whether Reason likes it or not, pretty much EVERY School Choice win in the last 3 decades has come from the GOP. If the Editors of Reason want more such School Choice victories, they should be highlighting the candidates and positions that can give it to them- not treating them all as one amorphous blob that is to be disregarded.

[JesseAz]

Vivek wants to end the DoEd but otherwise keep it as a state issue. He is largely a federalist.

[Roberta]

I guess since none of them are going to be elected president, it doesn't matter that federal law and policy has no effect on school choice.

[TJJ2000]

And the US DoEd does what then?