Residentially assigned schooling remains one of our nation’s most glaring imperfections — not because it doesn’t work for any children but because it could never work for all children. We consign generations of families to schools that have never once boasted a literacy rate over 10%, yet when parents plead for alternatives, the powers that be tell them to wait. All parents, but especially low-income ones, need and deserve options more than ever when it comes to where their children attend school.
In a 2019 interview with the National Education Association, America’s largest teachers union, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who was then a candidate for president, said out loud and on the record what so many union-funded pols think but dare not say: that low-income parents who are desperate for more and better schooling options for their children should stay put and fix their existing schools themselves.
“If you think your public school is not working, then go help your public school. Go help get more resources for it. Volunteer at your public schools. Help get the teachers and school bus drivers and cafeteria workers and the custodial staff and the support staff — help get them some support so they can do the work that needs to be done. You don’t like the building? You think it’s old and decaying? Then get out there and push to get a new one,” Warren said.
It’s no coincidence that Warren sent her own son to a private school instead of sticking around to “volunteer” at her local public school until things got better.
This one-size-fits-all system simply does not work for far too many students and families. When Providence Public Schools were the subject of a scathing report by the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Education Policy that showed academic standards and morale among both students and teachers were abysmally low, parents and grandparents showed up to community forums where they shared personal testimonials of generations of dysfunction and failure. One mother stepped to the microphone and shared that her ninth grade child still could not read.
The report made national headlines at the time, but one finding really stood out: “Very little visible student learning was going on in the majority of classrooms and schools.” These children needed and deserved an escape hatch before they too were handed diplomas that, to quote the education commissioner during one of the public forums, were “not worth the ink used to print them.”
Chronically low achievement isn’t the only reason parents are clamoring for more options. Indeed, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the list of parents’ concerns has grown exponentially. School administrations, local school boards, and even statewide boards of education have become increasingly politicized and dogmatic. And while some parents and activists might applaud this shift away from education and toward ideology, many others see it as indoctrination and don’t want their children anywhere near it.
California’s K-12 system, for example, has lost 271,000 students since the spring of 2020. Though we can’t know for sure the reasons so many families left the state’s public education system, one factor may be found on the state Department of Education’s “recommended literature” list for high schoolers. The list does not include a single book written before 2016 but does include books by former first lady Michelle Obama, “anti-racist” professor Ibram X. Kendi, and Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah.
Florida, by contrast, includes a mix of older and newer works. For example, students can read Booker T. Washington, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Chimamanda Adichie.
As California parents become aware of how limited the quality and scope of their public schools’ literature offerings are, some are likely to seek out an alternative that offers a range of classical titles. Every parent deserves access to a school where their children can read William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, or Zora Neale Hurston in an English class.
And then there are parents who don’t have the luxury of worrying about what’s on their school’s reading list because their child goes to school every day and can’t even read. Parents of children with dyslexia need a school with an evidence-based reading instruction program that teaches children to decode words and not guess based on the picture or other context clues. Yet the vast majority of teacher training programs in the United States do not train teachers on how to teach this kind of phonics-based curriculum.
Even students who don’t suffer from dyslexia are struggling to pick up on this basic skill. In fact, two-thirds of U.S. students can’t read on a grade level.
Some students can thrive when exposed to books with no formal instruction in letter combinations and letter-sound relationships. But for those who can’t, their chances of learning to read depend on them having an alternative school option that has the time and resources to help them. At the moment, most have no options at all.
And what about the parents who understandably assumed their children would be taught basic biological concepts only to discover that radical gender ideology has captured their schools’ science departments? If a parent believes fervently that children are not born in the wrong body and that “preferred pronouns” are not about inclusion but ideological submission, shouldn’t they have access to a school that better aligns with their values and beliefs?
Or what about parents in Philadelphia, where they’ve announced mask mandates for school children once again, who have read all the studies, looked at the comparative data from other states and countries, and determined the harms of masking children all day far outweigh any possible benefits? Don’t they deserve access to a school where children can actually see their classmates’ and teachers’ faces without worrying about whether they’ll be able to afford it?
The reality is that a majority of parents wanted more educational options for their children before the pandemic. Now, with the curtain pulled back on so many schools’ fixation on racial and gender identity, coupled with fierce disagreement over COVID-19 protocols, that majority, at 72%, is more overwhelming than ever. The moment for school choice is now.
It’s time to give the people — the parents — what they want.
Erika Sanzi is the director of outreach at Parents Defending Education.
