A group of conservative education experts praised Arizona’s recently enacted universal school choice program during a panel discussion on school choice and education policy at the Heritage Foundation.
The discussion, Empowering Families in Education, featured remarks from Heritage President Kevin Roberts, Corey DeAngelis, a school choice advocate and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, and Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of the parent activist organization Moms for Liberty. The conversation was moderated by the Washington Examiner’s Kaylee McGhee White.
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The three panelists touted school choice as the primary solution to the problems plaguing the nation’s education system and noted that the policy, which enjoys widespread support from people across the political spectrum, provides parents with significantly more control over their children’s education. Particular praise was reserved for the Arizona state government and Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ), who signed a bill into law earlier this summer enacting a universal school choice program.
“Arizona just went all in … and said, ‘You know what? We’re going to expand educational freedom to every single student, every single family, regardless of income.’ They’re going to be able to take their kids’ state-funded education dollars to the education providers of their choosing,” said the American Federation for Children’s DeAngelis, noting Arizona is the “gold standard” for education choice programs.
The panelists all agreed that school choice is a unique policy solution that could solve several problems facing K-12 education at once.
“School choice and educational freedom to me means trusting parents to make the best decision for their children,” Moms for Liberty’s Justice said. “Unfortunately, we have seen a nation that has not trusted parents to make good decisions for their kids, so educational freedom means that parents get to direct the upbringing and the education of their children.”
Heritage’s Roberts said that, for him, enacting school choice is an essential step to ensuring “equality of opportunity” for the nation’s students. In his remarks, he criticized the public education system for exacerbating economic and racial segregation.
“It’s difficult for me, as a historian of our republic, to think of another example in the last 75 years of a system that has gotten so much money that has done so much to re-segregate American kids,” Roberts said of the existing public school system. “We need every dollar with every child so that every parent can make a decision for his or her child so that we can, in fact, guarantee equality of opportunity, which is a defining characteristic of the United States of America.”
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“We have to all look and decide what is it we really want our education system to be doing and then empower parents, all parents,” Justice added.
