With a new school year beginning in the coming weeks, educational freedom for children is expanding like never before. Two key reasons for this expansion stand out: The COVID pandemic and the national teachers unions. These factors overlap significantly in that the teachers unions heavily influenced failed pandemic school policies, and those policies drove increasing numbers of parents to seek alternative options for their children outside the public school system.

During the last two school years, public school enrollment dropped on a net basis by nearly 1.3 million students, according to data tracked by the American Enterprise Institute and Davidson College. Undoubtedly, this number would have been higher if more parents could have afforded to leave.