Although many Americans, me included, are not in a jolly mood given the awful winter storm that has made life outside unbearable the past few days, there is a reason to celebrate this week in the winter doldrums because it is National School Choice Week.
Since 2011, National School Choice Week has helped “families learn more about the education options available for their children” by raising “equal awareness of traditional public, public charter, public magnet, private, online, home, and nontraditional learning environments.”
I think it is safe to say that the 15-year campaign to raise awareness that there should be robust competition in the K-12 educational realm has been quite successful so far.
In recent years, several states have initiated or expanded school choice programs. As of today, 24 states have universal school choice programs, 15 have limited school choice programs, and only 17 still offer no school choice programs.
Unlike most domestic policies, school choice receives strong support from both sides of the political aisle. According to a 2025 poll, “73% of voters believe school choice should be open to all families and only 20% would vote for an anti-school choice candidate over a pro-school choice candidate for state legislature.”
Given the popularity of school choice among parents with school-aged children, I find it baffling that school choice is not standard in all states.
It must be noted that of the the 17 states without school choice, 12 are in complete control of Democrats whereas 15 of the 18 states with universal school choice programs are in complete control of the GOP.
This is not by coincidence. It is by design, because the Democratic Party is generally in bed with powerful public school teacher unions, which despise school choice.
“Teachers unions have steadily amped up their political involvement: From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high. Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990,” reports Open Secrets.
Sadly, teacher unions adamantly oppose school choice because it would introduce the much-needed elements of competition and accountability into the K-12 education system that has functioned as a de facto monopoly for decades.
Over these many decades, public schools have operated sans competition, which has cultivated a sense of entitlement and complacency.
The real victims here are the tens of millions of American students who are attending costly public schools while barely learning how to read, write, or perform basic math and science.
This is not speculation, it is borne out by the declining test scores of American students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka the Nation’s Report Card.
The behavior of teacher unions and public schools during the pandemic showed their true colors. While most non-public schools continued to offer in-person learning to the best of their ability given the circumstances, nearly all public schools refused to open their classrooms for months.
The learning loss accrued during this period will have long-term effects for the cohort of students who were prevented from attending in-person learning, which had a disproportionate impact on “lower-income and minority districts.”
Making matters worse, public schools received huge infusions of taxpayer dollars under so-called pandemic relief funds. However, most of this money was not allocated to academic services; much of it was profligately spent “with little oversight or impact on students.”
Looking back, the sheer audacity of teacher unions and public schools, which were more concerned with posting about BLM protests and other radical left-wing political causes on social media during the pandemic, showed that these entities have become partisan political machines.
Trust me, as a former public high school teacher who retired a few years before the pandemic, this transformation from education to political propaganda has been years in the making.
During this period, public school funding has ballooned as public school enrollment has declined. In other words, it is not for a lack of funding that public schools are losing students. It is because millions of parents do not want to send their children to a school arbitrarily assigned by their zip code.
This makes perfect sense from a teacher’s perspective because we know that all students have different needs. The one-size-fits-all government-run K-12 education model is hopelessly corrupt, obsolete, and outdated. With new technologies like AI, we stand on the cusp of an educational revolution. It is time for universal school choice in all states so that all parents, regardless of income, can send their kids to the school that they think will best meet their unique needs and circumstances. Happy National School Choice Week, America!
Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
Chris Talgo is the Editorial Director for the Heartland Institute and a fellow for Heartland’s Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center.
