“With education funding following the student rather than being assigned to government-run institutions in a growing number of states, ” JD Tuccille writes in his annual “National School Choice Week” piece at Reason, “more families are choosing what works best for their kids — and the majority are satisfied with their decisions.”

On the main metrics Tuccille, and other “school choice” proponents use to measure success, that celebratory tone seems justified.

I don’t have a problem with school choice, correctly defined.

I don’t think those metrics correctly define it, so I’m not celebrating.

More and more state governments are, indeed, implementing or expanding “school choice” programs: Vouchers and tax credits for use at private schools, charter schools and “open enrollment” options for government schooling.

But are those programs “steps in the right direction” when it comes to either educational quality or actual choice?

Government (aka “public”) schools, including charter schools, may offer cosmetic differences, but their curricula and other standards are all set by government.

Vouchers and tax credits can be used at private schools … if those private schools accept those government-mandated curricular parameters and other standards. “School choice” as currently defined effectively turns them into government schools.

And government schools, by most methods of accounting — standardized test scores, parent opinion, etc. — don’t seem to do a very good job of teaching kids to read, write, and do arithmetic.

Suppose the government offered you these choices:

It would provide you with groceries in return for your tax payments, but those groceries would consist entirely of apples, ground beef, and white sandwich bread.

Or, it would give you a partial refund of your taxes in the form of a voucher or credit to spend on groceries … defined as apples, ground beef, and white sandwich bread.

“School choice” as currently defined brings to mind an apocryphal quote, attributed to Henry Ford, regarding his company’s Model T: “Any color the customer wants, as long as it’s black.”

Real choice entails a range of options, not just various ways of choosing the same single option.

Today’s “school choice” regimes actually REDUCE real choice by imposing “as long as it’s black” requirements on the institutions where vouchers and tax credits can be spent.

Do supporters of the current “school choice” paradigm believe the long arm of  “as long as it’s black” won’t soon reach out to strangle the surviving bastions of real choice — homeschooling and cooperative “microschool” projects — too?

We can continue to tolerate government control of education, or we can exercise real school choice. We can’t do both. The former, by its very nature, obliterates the latter.

Real school choice requires separation of school and state.

“National School Choice Week?”

No. “National School Choice: Weak.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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