My colleague Tomis Parker recently shared with me the draft of an article he is writing that focuses on the question, Why Does the Left Hate School Choice? Tomis contends that opposing school choice is a dead-end, voter-losing strategy for Democrats, and that they need to re-consider their objections. I basically agree with Tomis that the current momentum of the school choice movement may pull voters away from the Democrats, but his rhetoric and framing of the question make me a bit defensive of my own liberal politics. I propose that for my own goal of making school optional for every youth, we need to make the issue of school choice transcend politics, and that to do so we need to overcome the lack of trust currently fomented by partisans on both sides. I hold both a sense of optimism and enthusiasm that we are already on this path, and a bit of dread that our current political climate is too fraught for rational conversation. Those of us working in the field are doing what we can to address this situation.
I know it’s fun to start this conversation by blaming the left for resisting school choice. There is some truth to the assertion, as teachers’ unions adamantly oppose any program that threatens the loss of students or money from the public school system. On the other hand, plenty of people on the left, both now and historically, are dedicated to providing options for students and families seeking an alternative to the standard classroom. I know many teachers (some of whom are members of the union) that choose private schools and homeschooling for their own families.
Meanwhile, on the right, we do hear some attacks that describe public schooling as being so broken it needs to be destroyed completely, and that the goal of school choice is to support all families to migrate to private schools and homeschooling. This extreme view is not supported by plenty of conservatives in the movement, nor among those who send their kids to public school and work in public schools themselves as teachers and administrators.
This rhetorical divide is unpleasant, and the ongoing framing of the situation as a zero-sum game (both in terms of the percentage of students in public or private schools and in terms of the public funding going to each system) is making things more tense.
How can we transcend this conflict and make school choice a healthy and normal part of the culture?
1. Reframe the question. Instead of talking about the left or the right, let’s start by asking the central question: How do we provide options to every child and family? No one ought to be trapped in one district-assigned classroom or school. What options do we want to offer parents when one of their children may need, want, or prefer something different than the standard classroom? Often, the school choice search begins for a family with just one child who is having a conflict or needs or a fresh start, while other children in the same family remain in the public school. School choice is not always a family philosophy; it is often a temporary strategy for aspecific child. In fact, over my nearly 30 years with North Star, I can’t recall a single inquiry conversation with a parent that ever began with the parent bringing up politics.
In our current system, most ordinary families cannot afford to pay for private school and independent homeschooling seems unrealistic to them. How do we help those feeling stuck?
2. Acknowledge the Money. If we want to offer alternatives to all families, there needs to be public funds in some fashion. The current leading format is Education Savings Accounts, and some states are experimenting with tax scholarship funds and refundable tax credits. Even low- cost private schools and homeschooling programs need to cost at least $6,000-$12,000 per year per student in order to provide the most basic staff salaries and a pleasant space, and most families cannot afford to pay that amount. There is not enough philanthropy and fundraising to go around at the scale we are discussing. At the same time, public schools have legal obligations to serve every child, often with costly services and personnel, and simply defunding the system creates strong resistance. How can we make school choice real for families while guaranteeing public schools a functional budget?
The politics on this topic are ironic and inconsistent. Normally, conservatives and Libertarians do not want large public entitlement programs moving tax funds from one group of citizens to another. Normally, liberals are in favor of subsidizing social opportunities for medium and lower income families. The inconsistencies might be interesting to discuss and explore if the situation wasn’t framed as a high-stakes, win-lose conflict. Can we have both reasonably funded public schools and provide parents with resources and options for their children needing an alternative? I think so, and I look forward to challenging and serious conversations on this issue.
3. Allow Public Schools to Change. One appealing aspect of starting North Star as neither a public nor private school was claiming our complete freedom to structure the program as we wished. Public schools where I live cannot currently offer part-time options, or classes for homeschoolers, or suggest students aim for a GED rather than a traditional diploma. I would like to see public school teachers and administrators allowed to be as creative as our microschool founders. This freedom needs to come from state legislatures and is an essential part of creating a so-called level playing field for school choice.
4. Celebrate Choices, including using Public Schools. Widespread school choice will definitely lead to some decline in public school enrollment. Currently, approximately 70-75% of K-12 students are enrolled in conventional public schools, with the remainder in public charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. A well-run school choice program will see that number decrease.
However, I don’t believe it would go down to zero. One fear on the left is that highly functional families will leave public schooling, making the system “a dumping ground” with only the hardest cases. I don’t think this is likely to happen. Perhaps I’m naïve. I’m also aware that as of this decade, there is still a dominant portion of Americans who wish for their children to simply go to their neighborhood public school, make friends, have decent teachers and academics, play sports, find a mentor, and graduate with a sense of community. Public schools that offer this experience now are well-loved. The school choice movement needs to hold the local public school as one valid option, and protect the basic funding needed for this system to function.
Also, if North Star is a fair sample, school choice programs often welcome some of the most difficult students, such as those who refuse to attend regularly, or have significant mental health-physical health-sleep struggles that make their attendance irregular. The colleagues and programs with which I’m familiar are not cherry-picking the simplest cases.
My goal is for all students to have a school, program, or approach that works for them. Every year we see some North Star members make the choice to return to the public school system, and we see that personal agency and outcome as part of our success. I cringe when I hear school choice advocates rooting for students to leave public school, and taking it as a loss when a student chooses the familiar public school system.
5. Acknowledge Religion. I come to this topic having overcome a lot of personal resistance. I have always understood that the separation of church and state meant no public money to religious schools. However, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that school choice money given to parents does not equal the establishment of a state religion, even if those parents use that money for religious school tuition. I’ve struggled on this point, but I also recognize that many people view my commitment to self-directed learning as an odd sort of faith, and are wary of seeing public funds go in my direction. Various non-religious private schools have philosophies such as Waldorf and Montessori. While I’m not for our government directly choosing and funding specific religious schools (and a recent Supreme Court decision halted an Oklahoma Catholic charter school at least for now with a 4-4 vote,) a healthy school choice system has to trust parents and students. To be overly simplistic, it’s either unschooling and religious schools, or it’s neither.
6. Safety Net for Hardest Cases. While public schools are required to work with all students, many of those who are neurodiverse or dealing with mental health issues are the ones feeling most in need of alternatives. Much of the recent school choice movement has been centered on providing options for those with “special needs” as diagnosed by the system, and the past decade is filled with heart-warming outcomes for those unsatisfied with what had been provided by their public school system. I have no need to over-generalize here, but many founders in the school choice world have had precisely these students in mind. School choice has largely been about providing an option for hard cases that don’t fit in the standard classroom.
7. Transportation. In Massachusetts, only standard public-school students are offered the free yellow school bus. People who choose charter schools, inter-district school choice, private schools, or homeschooling are on their own for transportation. Clearly, this practical problem is a severely limiting issue. School choice founders do their best to be centrally located and promote carpooling. I know that some states do provide transportation over a limited distance to private schools. Without a doubt, transportation is a top item in making school choice a full consideration for all families.
8. Admissions and Seats. In the short-term, there are not enough private schools and homeschooling program slots to accommodate a significant increase in families with school choice funds. The worst short-term outcome for the movement would be a status quo with inflated private school tuitions. Ironically, perhaps, the people doing the most work to avoid this outcome in the short- and medium-term are the major school choice funders doing everything they can to support the creation of more schools and programs. (Disclosure: North Star has received funds from VELA Foundation; Liberated Learners has received funds from Stand Together Trust. As of this writing, I can share that in 2025 North Star will be receiving funds from the Novo Foundation.) These groups are holding conferences, offering trainings, and providing start-up grants and loans to potential Starters to help visionary people and teams to create their own schools and programs. My experience has been that there are no strings attached and that all experiments are welcome. Privately, I’m a bit discouraged that most of these experiments are school-oriented models rather than self-directed learning centers, but that is not because of any top-down direction.
Offering support for potential Starters or Founders of new programs is the focus of our work at Liberated Learners, and we are a tiny piece of a much larger effort moving full steam ahead.
9. Race. School choice is perceived by many people, especially those on the left, as a modern
scheme for “White Flight” from multiracial public schools. In fact, there is some unpleasant history from the 1950s when southern states closed their public schools in response to the Brown vs. Board of Education decision and offered White families vouchers to private schools known as “Segregation Academies.”
Currently, some of the most pro-school choice states are also the most limiting of progressive multicultural teaching and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, resisting support for LGBTQ students, and demanding of ‘patriotic’ curriculum and procedures. As a former 8th Grade U.S. History teacher, I would be fired in these states for the using the curriculum I developed.
Even with all of these issues, I see BiPOC parents and educators participating fully and enthusiastically in the school choice movement. They are seizing the moment to create their own preferred settings and choose their own curriculum free of hostile administrative oversight. Take one look at the VELA Foundation recipients, make one visit to any microschool conference, have one perusal of the recent mainstream media and you will see that leaders in the African-American, Latinx, and other communities are embracing this moment. (In fact, there is enough movement that cynics might fear that red-state politicians are deliberately making public schools hostile on purpose to generate this reaction.)
Also, the new schools and programs resulting from school choice are in many cases more racially diverse than our current public school system. We know that outside of major cities,our housing patterns result in most students going to school with peers from their own racial demographics. More time, patience, and intentional effort will provide better information in the coming years.
I grew up with concerns for racial equality and participating in what has become the anti-racism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement. I do not like the attacks I see on this work from the current Department of Education. Some public-school educators will choose to stay and fight; others will leave to start their own programs using school choice laws and funds. Just as I think school choice needs to transcend our left-right political divide, I think we need to do some hard work to help it transcend our current hostile conversation about race and education. This conversation requires trust, and I regret that important ingredient is in short supply right now.
Reasons for Optimism
I spent my childhood in the Shaker Heights, OH public schools, and my twenties as a public-school teacher and reformer. When I grew disillusioned with the system and started North Star in 1996, we had few role models and almost no community. We could look to the unschooling movement (John Holt, Grace Llewellyn, John Taylor Gatto,) and a few democratic free schools (Sudbury Valley School, Albany Free School) as models. There was one network for support (AERO). Now, there are thousands of people and programs across the United States creating interesting alternatives. The range of options for students and families is very different than when I was a child. In fact, I see a new reality that, in contrast to my K-12 experience in one public school system, many students will utilize a variety of options over the ages of 5-18 years old.
Further, and please take this with whatever grain or mountain of salt you wish, the Founders I meet through my webinars, at conferences, and through a range of podcasts and webinars are politically diverse and include a preponderance of liberals. These teachers, parents, and entreprenuers are pursuing their dreams to put themselves in a new position and to do right by their students. They are sacrificing or risking income they could have maintained in previous teaching positions. They are supporting and valuing diversity, including LGBTQ and multiracial communities. Of course, some in the movement have different values and priorities. However, from the ground up, the day-to-day work of the school choice movement is being done by dedicated, welcoming, visionary people who want to provide a meaningful option to students and families in their communities. Their school choice efforts are not politically motivated, and generally, I suspect many of them vote as I do.
Reasons for Pessimism
Speaking of voting, I am unable to make school choice a voting issue for myself at this time. I value democracy and a long list of other items that make it impossible for me to consider voting for the current pro-school choice Republican party. Until more Republicans separate themselves from the current President and national leadership, I will not be able to align my professional interests with my larger civic interests. I expect I am not alone, and this is cause for delay and pessimism.
Some of the national school choice leadership is publicly aligned with Project 2025, the current Secretary of Education, and the Presidential administration. I find it impossible to be on this team, even when I agree with certain specific content. I wish there were safety and flexibility to hear school choice leaders step out to create space for a dialogue. Can they publicly declare that while they are fighting for school choice, they also reject authoritarianism and some other behaviors that are dividing our country? If not, it will be hard to nurture the sort of trust I think is essential to the vision I have for this conversation.
For the school choice movement to transcend our differences, we need to have a trusting, open dialogue starting with where we are already working together and the values we share in common. School choice leaders on the right need to declare they are not for the utter defunding and destruction of public schooling; school choice leaders on the left need to declare they can live with opening up the system and allowing those seeking options to have some freedom and resources to explore them. All of us can focus on the best way to offer multiple options to every child.
Back to Tomis
Thank you, Tomis Parker, for sparking this push. I agree with your frustration over “Why Does the Left Hate School Choice?” I also want us to discuss “How do we talk about school choice without vilifying the left or the right?” and start with “The immediate work of the people and programs in the school choice world is not politically-motivated or neatly aligned.” I look forward to a larger conversation.
I thought of another point that I have never heard raised with regard to the funding of public schools–specifically, how they always want more. At the risk of sounding like you-know-who, I can’t imagine that there isn’t a great amount of waste (forget “fraud and abuse”) in the larger school districts especially, just as there is in any large corporation. Awhile back, when Total Quality Management was the talk of the town, those who applied those principles and practices found ways to improve quality and reduce costs simultaneously. Because schools are, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly, there is little incentive to find ways to improve the processes and reduce expense at the same time. Too many contractors are making too much money, for example, for there to be a push for this kind of reform. Look at the warehouses filled with unused text books, for one example. Look at the money spent on chasing down truants for another. As the Japanese say, “Mountains of opportunity” (in this case, for intelligent savings).
Ken, I think this piece is excellent, on target, and well timed. The collaboration of which you speak between “left” and “right” is exactly what made it possible for us in PA to get a home education law passed in the mid-to-late ’80s. Neither side could have done it alone. I was often in a room with folks with whom I had strong disagreement on other topics, even with regard to how to “homeschool”. We all had to set those differences aside in order to attend to the task at hand.
I particularly like your discussion regarding public schools, about not seeing them as the enemy and more than we want them to see “pro-choice” schooling as the end of the Western world as we know it. Your advice to keeping the focus on providing the best option for each individual youth is, I believe, the only way we’re going to move forward. Ideologies must stand aside, left or right.
I also like the way that you pull no punches in addressing the myths about public schooling as the only, let alone best, way to deal with DEI issues as well as special ed issues (e.g., neuro-divergent)–pointing out that it is precisely the failure of public schools to deal with these matters that leads so many families to opt out of public schooling.
I am hoping that this piece of writing reaches a wide audience. One suggestion is for everyone to send a copy to his/her/their state and federal legislator. Perhaps a least a staff person will read it. I met with my state rep recently and, as soon as I raised the issue, she immediately assumed that I represented the goals of the Freedom Caucus, a group in the PA Assembly who seem to want to burn down the public school system. Your writing increases the chances of reasonable dialogue and eventual collaboration rather than entrenched warfare. Thank you for your efforts. Now I’m off to print a copy for my state rep.
Well said, Ken, and exactly what we need! For a democratic society to work, we need trust. We must move away from the trite, worn-out partisan attacks and focus on the places where we agree to get to universal education freedom or school choice, with learners directing their path. It’s been old news for quite a while that certain interest groups benefit from the perpetuation of the monolith that is public education in its current form. It’s important to recognize that, but it isn’t where the focus should be. You provide a well-thought-out plan to move in the direction we need to go in. Thank you for leading the conversation in a solution focus direction.