School Choice Opponents Need To Stop Gaslighting Parents
Education activist Andrew Campanella on the moral perversity of school-choice critics.
Today's guest, the author and school choice activist Andrew Campanella, is angry but energized.
"I just wish people who opposed school choice would come out instead of trying to gaslight everybody and tell people that choice doesn't work for any number of reasons," he tells Nick Gillespie in today's podcast. "I wish people who oppose school choice would argue [that they do] not trust families to make decisions for their kids."
Campanella is the author of the new book The School Choice Roadmap: 7 Steps to Finding the Right School for Your Child, which provides a history and overview of the choice movement and practical advice on how to match children with schools at which they'll flourish. He is also the president of National School Choice Week, an organization that runs the largest annual public awareness effort to promote student and parental choice in K-12 education. National School Choice Week started on January 26 and runs until February 1 this year. Over 53,000 events around the country showcase the benefits of letting kids choose where they go to school—whether via public charters, tax credits and vouchers for private schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, or other options.
"We expect people to make every other choice in their life, but we are not going to…allow them to choose schools their kids attend," says Campanella in a wide-ranging conversation that details the massive growth in school choice over the past 50 years. "Not giving people options, not giving people choices, not giving them that freedom…It doesn't make any sense. It is actually not a concept that really fits well with who we are as a country."
Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.
