Choose School Choice

 

 

 Choose School Choice

A group of students who know the

answer to the question

Imagine a teacher giving a presentation to her students, but one child isn’t learning as well as the other children. The public school setting just isn’t right for that child, but he doesn’t have the means to find a different learning platform.

The future of the United States depends on children getting quality education, and not all children learn the same way. School choice would offer new opportunities to children throughout the United States in grades K-12 to get a quality education they deserve.

School choice gives families the options to use the taxes they pay to state and local government to support public education towards the type of education that best fits their child’s needs. The types of schooling include public, private (religious and non-religious), charter, homeschool, and any other type of learning curriculum.

Pennsylvania Attorney General and Governor Candidate, 
              Josh Shapiro (Democrat), Supports School Choice

So basically, the government gives more freedom to families to educate their children by providing them with the means to do so.

Inner-city schools often get a bad rep for not offering the best academic services. So, what if a poor family wants a better opportunity for their children, but can’t afford to send their child elsewhere? Well, that’s a tricky situation. But if school choice was offered, families could have the opportunity to make decision to try these options and direct up to $11,600 for their child’s education. That sounds pretty darn helpful!

 

Internet Baking Star, Rosanna Pansino

School choice can offer an increase in diversity in schools as well. An article from HAL Open Science states that, “it seems that the reform increased diversity within school by 4 to 5%.” School choice offers not only better educational opportunities, but also an increase in diversity which is very important.

When parents get a choice of where their children go to school, they become more involved in their child’s education. When a parent becomes more involved in education, their student’s performance increases. Evidence suggests that all areas of academics are improved when school choice is implemented. Parental assistance in education is very helpful to kids, as they learn not only what their teachers teach them, but also their parents' knowledge.

 

Wouldn’t This Create Competition Between Schools?

              Who doesn’t love a little bit of healthy competition? Competition can actually improve the achievement of students. According to a Journal in Educational Policy, “In general, competition resulting from school-choice policies does have a small positive effect on student achievement. The lack of an overall negative impact on student outcomes might ease critics’ concerns that competition will hurt those students “left behind” due to school-choice policies.” It is important that not one class or race benefits over another when creating school choice policies. However, the increasing in diversity of schools as well as the small positive effect on student achievement show that there is no reason to believe that one child or one group will be left behind if school choice policies are implemented everywhere.

Is this legal?

Opponents to school choice claim that it violates the First Amendment to the Constitution because of the separation of church and state. However, the government is not directly giving money to religious schools. It is giving money to the families of children so they can decide what educational service to use the money on. Remember when stimulus checks were sent out in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic? These funds were supposed to relieve families that had been struggling with money because of the pandemic. But the government didn’t make you spend that money on anything specific. I could have donated the entire lump of money I got to my church if I wanted to. And while this situation is different, all the money given to a family will have to go to whatever education platform they choose. 

Wouldn’t The Quality of Education Go Down in Public Schools?

Other critics fear middle class families would leave public schools, leaving the poor to suffer in schools no longer appropriately funded. This is the fear of many people, but no evidence has been found to support that fear. In fact, school choice would offer more students the ability to choose the best school for them lessening the population of public schools. According to the Swedish Economic Policy Review, “The evidence suggests that there is room for productivity gains of 50 to 69 percent in public schools.” 50-60 percent is a HUGE jump in productivity.

Education Should Be Most Important 

              At the end of the day, all families want what is best for their kids. You should be able to decide what type of education is best for your children and it would be great if the government could provide any help to make education easier for your family. School choice can provide children with a greater opportunity to learn and succeed. As a society, there should be a push for the access to school choice everywhere within the United States so that the future of the country is better educated.

You pay taxes for schooling, so you should be able to choose what education is best for your family.

 

Kids Happy to Be Learning