In more than two decades of fighting for educational freedom, I’ve heard opponents offer a lot of excuses as to why parents shouldn’t have the ability to select the schools their children attend.
Some people think school choice will harm public education. Others fret that “good” schools might lack enough space for all those interested in attending. But the most insidious objection to school choice stems from the idea that some families, for instance, families with lower incomes or limited English proficiency, might find the process of selecting a school too intimidating or “too hard” to arrive at a good result.
If you don’t believe that some individuals would insult their less fortunate countrymen by calling them incapable of making good choices for their children, think again. Several years ago, one state teachers union leader went so far as to say the following about low-income parents choosing their children’s schools: “If I’m a parent in poverty, I have no clue because I’m trying to struggle and live day to day.”
What utter nonsense. For good and for ill, I know quite a lot about struggling. I spent years working multiple jobs to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck, coming home exhausted every night. But I summoned the energy to start right back up again the next day.
I also know a bit about struggling against prejudice. When my father became the first black school administrator in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1967, I watched the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross in my front yard. And I view the notion that low-income parents lack the intellectual capacity to pick a good school for their children as something baseless and pernicious, akin to the thinking that led the Klan to burn that cross on my front lawn when I was a teenager.
Parents of all incomes, races, and creeds have it within themselves to choose good schools for their sons and daughters. All of them should have the chance to do so.
When I saw that William, my youngest child, wasn’t meeting his full potential in his public school — his teachers had actually called him “incapable” of learning — I did what I needed to do in order to get him a quality education. When a neighbor graciously offered to pay half of William’s tuition, I found a second job to scrape together the other half.
Sure enough, William’s new school turned his life around. His grades improved, as did his motivation. Because he felt like his new teachers cared about him, he applied himself and achieved his full potential. After graduation, he proudly served his country in the Marines.
Test results from the “Nation’s Report Card” demonstrate why minority and low-income families desperately need school choice. At virtually all grade levels, achievement gaps in math and reading — between whites and Hispanics, between whites and blacks, and between low-income families enrolled in the school lunch program and those not participating — have not budged in decades. Families struggling to make ends meet need the power to select better schools for their children, not insults from patronizing officials.
Millions of American children such as William could benefit from school choice, if only their families had the chance. Thankfully, in the years since I chose a high school for William, parents now have more tools and organizations available to them to guide them through the school choice process.
National School Choice Week, which will be observed later this month, provides an excellent opportunity for parents to learn more about the school choice process. More than 50,000 events will be held from Jan. 26 through Feb. 1, many of them school fairs sponsored by various organizations. The fairs will give parents an opportunity to compare various school choice options in a no-pressure environment and find out how to apply.
National School Choice Week is nonpartisan, shining a positive spotlight on all forms of school choice, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling options. Despite my son William’s struggle, I am not anti-public school; I am pro-parent empowerment when it comes to picking the best school for individual children and having the ability to make that choice.
Virginia Walden Ford is a parent advocate and school choice supporter. She is the subject of the recent feature film “Miss Virginia” and author of School Choice: A Legacy to Keep.
