Last week was National School Choice Week, and I attended a School Choice Fair in Manchester, New Hampshire to see if I could find some people interested in starting Liberated Learners programs in the Granite State. New Hampshire offers Education Freedom Accounts to homeschoolers, worth approximately $5,000 per student, which offers a considerable head start on operating a center there.

I met some state-wide officials (Kate Baker, coordinator of the event; Frank Edelblut, NH Commissioner of Education and veteran homeschooling parent; Tim Carney, NH Department of Education for Home Education, EFAs) and some people involved in homeschooling support programs, such as Latitude Learning, Micah Studios, and Kaipod. However, my guess is that 90% of the tables were representing schools: private schools, charter schools, and public schools. Most school-choice options are, reasonably, schools! There were only a few people present to promote programs that do not require attendance, do not offer credits and diplomas, and do not measure students with grades and test scores. Even in libertarian New Hampshire, our approach is a minor consideration in the context of religious schools, prep schools, and charter schools. I do think I advanced my goal of connecting with people who can help us find potential groups to start centers, and it’s always fun for me to compare notes with others in the field. Still, if you know likely people or groups in Keene, Hanover, Nashua, or Portsmouth who may want to start a center, please let me know!

Last week I also read Cara Fitzpatrick’s new book on school choice, The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won The War Over Education in America. Fitzpatrick details the last 70 years of this policy debate, which I found fascinating. The story involves a lot of politics that were in my peripheral vision, as I have been focused on homeschooling, unschooling, and democratic alternatives in the narrow world of self-directed education. I was certainly aware of experiments in Milwaukee and Cleveland (my hometown), but they did not capture my attention. As I read this book, I felt Fitzpatrick was writing one of the books I most needed in my life right now.

One large theme of the book is to question how important schools are for being the place in our community where neighbors meet each other and have a common experience that is generally shared across the country. Do schools give most Americans a common experience? What are the implications if instead of the common school, we all choose school communities that consist of people like ourselves?

Fitzpatrick begins with the modern roots of school choice in the 1950s, which are independently 1) resistance by white southerners to integrated schools after Brown vs. Board of Education and 2) Milton Friedman’s landmark essay proposing vouchers, The Role of Government in Education. She describes the long battle by some conservatives for public funds to cover religious schools, explaining the legal cases and arguments between lawyers Clint Bolick (pro-vouchers) and Robert Chanin (pro-public schools.) She introduces two activists from Milwaukee, first Virgil Blum, a member of the Catholic clergy who long-promoted public money for families choosing religious schools, and Polly Williams, a Black city councilwoman who partnered with Republican Governor Tommy Thompson to start a limited voucher experiment for mostly Black families in Milwaukee. Spoiler alert: things don’t end well for Williams’ relationship with Thompson when she concludes his interests for vouchers are not mainly centered on her community. Fitzpatrick goes on to cover the growth of charter schools (often supported by Democrats, including Presidents Clinton and Obama) and a separate, sometimes conflicting push for vouchers for private schools (often supported by Republicans.) All of this history felt familiar to me, and I enjoyed the careful step-by-step storytelling and analysis.

Fitzpatrick ends her history with 2019, before the pandemic. I was a bit surprised when she somewhat abruptly concluded, “The future of American education was not to be found in a system of common schools for everyone, but in everyone making a la carte educational choices for themselves.” She had been writing about public schools, private schools (mostly religious schools), and charter schools, all of which are full-time options. She includes very little about homeschooling in the book, and nothing about Education Savings Accounts or anything “a la carte.” Her description of the school choice movement does not prepare the reader for this sudden introduction of a new approach in the final paragraph.

My reactions:

1. According to Fitzpatrick, the school choice movement is a three-pronged debate among conventional public schools, charter schools that are largely public schools, and private schools that are mostly religious schools. This story is intellectually fascinating to me, but doesn’t move me emotionally. To the extent that this is the heart of the school choice debate, I’ll be engaged back in my narrow aspect of this world, Self-Directed Education.

2. Her book title, The Death of Public School, suggests that conservatives have won, and that we will now have public money financing private schools largely to the detriment of public schools. This may be true, but I think she overstates the case. First, we are only at the very beginning of this process, and we will see how it evolves over the next decade or so.

3. Even with vouchers, a solid percentage of Americans (regardless of political party affiliation) will continue to choose their mainstream public school over any alternative. They value the community, the traditions, the sports, and the range of offerings available only with a critical mass.

4. Having families choose activities “a la carte” is how we manage the summer, the weekends, and afterschool time. If families had a child tax credit or voucher to supplement these choices, that would be fine with me. I’d love to see schooling and education move along these lines, especially if public schools could get into the game of allowing part-time attendance or options for hybrid-homeschooling and non-diploma-oriented classes and programs. (In fact, Kerry McDonald just released a podcast about a Jefferson County, Colorado program along these lines.)

5. This school choice debate is not nearly as partisan as our media makes it seem to be. Where I live, largely among liberals in western Massachusetts, charter schools have long waiting lists and inter-district public school choice is well-utilized. People of all political outlooks want to have options for their children, often starting with the standard public school. When that experience doesn’t feel healthy for any particular child, parents seek alternatives. As we know, most parents in the United States cannot afford expensive options for schooling their children. What is the best mechanism for offering most families a few choices? And what sort of choices ought to be included? Who else shares the Liberated Learners vision of including “no school” among these possibilities?