Setting the Record Straight on School Choice

The Credible Research Shows Progress for Kids.

Recent columns in the news media, including ones in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, are using self-selected data points to suggest that private school choice programs do not work for children. This assertion, while it makes a nice headline and feeds a false narrative the education establishment is working overtime to create, bears no resemblance to the actual evidence.

It’s time to set the record straight.

There have been 15 gold standard empirical studies of private school choice and academic outcomes: 10 are positive, 3 are neutral, and 2 are negative—only based upon on results in early years of those two studies.

By comparison, only 40 percent of 4th grade public school children are proficient in math and 36 percent of 4th grade public school children are proficient in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Today, there are approximately 3.5 million children enrolled in charter schools or one of the 50 private school choice programs in 25 states and Washington, D.C. There’s a reason that tens of thousands of families are on waiting lists or have to participate in lotteries to get into a school of choice. Parents have made it crystal clear to lawmakers that they want educational choice and they don’t want it limited to public school choice.  Likely voters have made their opinions clear in polling – 68 percent support school choice, and those percentages are even higher among African-American (72 percent), Hispanic (75 percent), and Millennial (75 percent) voters.

School choice works. It works based on the research, and it works according to the 3.5 million children currently benefitting and the undeniable demand of millions of additional parents who want to choose the best school for their children.

Find a summary on school choice research here: http://bit.ly/2lDX23K.