Yanking your child from public school has never been more popular. It’s too bad this is only an option for those with means.
In the past year alone, tens of thousands of parents have pulled their students from public schools and enrolled them in private schools open for in-person learning or homeschooling pods that allow more control over the material being taught.
Unfortunately, this range of options is not available to many families.
Many public schools were dreadful before the pandemic closed their doors. A 2018 national poll from EdChoice found that two-thirds of parents with children in the public school system would prefer to send their students elsewhere, but they do not have access to other education options.
National School Choice Week, which runs from Jan. 24 to Jan. 30, was created several years ago to help those parents discover their options and select the right school for their children. The program provides online resources explaining state laws and the types of schools that are available, and it also offers various virtual events, including social media contests, drive-in movie screenings, scavenger hunts, and virtual school fairs.
Many states have decided to participate in the events themselves. The governor’s mansion in South Carolina was lit up with red and yellow lights on Jan. 24 to help spread awareness about National School Choice Week. Tennessee’s state capitol was lit up from dusk to dawn between Jan. 22 and Jan. 24. Several other civic centers, courthouses, and cultural places joined the celebration in other states. Most notably, Niagara Falls in upstate New York glowed in red and yellow for 15 minutes on Jan. 24.
School choice is on the march — to the pleasure of activists who have spent years battling leftist organizations and teachers unions trying to stop state lawmakers from passing school choice-friendly laws. These liberal groups have argued that states should pass more funding for public schools instead of expanding school choice.
But the past year has confirmed that a lack of funding is not the problem. Rather, the problem is with the people running our public schools — the teachers who don’t seem to care that remote learning is destroying students’ lives and the administrators who have prioritized the political demands of teachers unions ahead of students’ needs. Parents need to start looking elsewhere, and school choice allows them to do just that.
