Why Is School Choice So Controversial?

A few weeks ago, I returned to the internet after an eleven-day fast from social media, websites, and email while I completed a walking pilgrimage in Spain. I had been back on the internet all of one day before my X feed began teeming with the latest controversy in my field: commentary about President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which had just been signed into law. The algorithm knows me well, and even without knowing my voting preferences, it knew which particular part of this wide-ranging legislation would interest me as a historian of education and a homeschooling parent: school choice. 

The Big Beautiful Bill is just the latest controversial topic in the political debate over public funding of charter, private, and home schools. Americans have long been extremely skittish about giving public money to religious schools in particular, so most school choice legislation tries to find a compromise that will please many different parties. This bill, for example, offers a tax credit for donations that support school choice scholarships (a workaround that is also used in some states). The federal bill was especially notable, however, because most education legislation happens at the state level.  

Indeed, in recent years state legislation on school choice has been supercharged, especially as several states established voucher programs or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) during the COVID pandemic. These state bills have not only been politically controversial (much like the federal bill) but also, somewhat surprisingly, they have stirred up conflict between school choice advocates and many homeschooling lobbying groups and other organizations. While advocates for public funding of private and charter schools sometimes wish to privilege funding of these schools over homeschooling, many homeschooling advocates see ESAs as merely a means for the state to increase regulation over homeschooling. Since federal and state funds for education have nearly always come with strings attached, they may well be right. It remains to be seen.  

My research into the matter for a forthcoming book suggests that homeschooling families, however, are largely enthusiastic about ESAs. It’s a relief for families to have some support in the expensive task of educating their children, whether at home or in private schools. And many families don’t mind some state regulation. In my circles in Virginia, at least, homeschooling and private schooling families are eager for support for private school tuitions for their children; like so many public school systems, our county schools are fraught with problems, and yet many families find themselves routinely priced out of the local private options. Still, families who use ESAs for homeschooling in states that allow this acknowledge that it’s not a perfect solution; as one Arizona mother who uses an ESA to support her family’s schooling told me recently, she has found the ESA process to be still full of “bugs.” 

With public schools across the nation underperforming so dramatically (just look at the Nation’s Report Card), it’s easy to guess why so many politicians and public school systems bristle at the idea of school choice. Public schools have been losing students rapidly over the past decade, in part due to parental dissatisfaction (particularly during the pandemic), and in part due to the simple decline in the number of school-aged children in America, as the nation’s birthrate continues to fall; these declines have continued beyond the pandemic, particularly in middle schools. And now this summer President Trump also halted the release of certain federal grants to public school districts across the country until the school year had nearly begun. Public school districts literally cannot afford to lose students to school choice. 

But social controversy over school choice is not limited to wanting to support public schools. Indeed, many individuals and institutions respond bitterly to the idea of families making schooling choices different from the norm. It’s Auntie Susan badgering her homeschooling relatives about whether their children can possibly be adequately socialized, and the teacher neighbor arguing at the block party that the real problem for public schools is that all the “good” parents have left for private schooling. But it’s also the Catholic bishop of San Diego forbidding the use of diocesan buildings (such as church basements) by homeschooling groups, because Catholic homeschooling draws some children away from diocesan schools. It’s the Fairfax, Virginia school district implying that pandemic “pods” were immoral because it’s not fair if “pod” schoolchildren don’t fall behind to the same degree as Fairfax public schoolchildren. It’s the idea that all children need to go to the same schools, as both the San Diego and the Fairfax arguments suggest, and that these schools need to be under some sort of institutional control, even if it’s not actually what’s best for the particular child. 

Historian Nadya Williams has argued convincingly that much of the opposition to homeschooling, in particular, is a red herring that distracts families from the devastating problems in America’s public schools. Yet on the most micro level, fewer and fewer parents are willing to accept this distraction. As public school performance continues to decline and private school tuition continues to be unaffordable for most parents, increasing numbers of families are seeking alternatives to both public schooling and to conventional private schooling options (such as diocesan schools). Homeschooling rates continue to rise, while classical schools are popping up all over the country in response to dissatisfaction with existing school options. Microschools, tutoring pods, and other alternatives also continue to thrive as parents try different modes of education, with or without state or federal funding. 

Parents who are dissatisfied with school options are continuing to advocate real choices no matter what the political and social controversy. These parents want choices that are not confined to the underperforming school down the road or the out-of-reach tuition of the local college prep school. For while Americans may be highly critical of each other’s school choices, we also have a long history of believing that schooling should be a locally controlled matter, one that may have some government input but is primarily controlled by local parents. After all, while the nineteenth-century common school on which our modern systems are based was indeed intended to socialize diverse children into a single society, these schools were also locally controlled and even featured teachers who commonly boarded in their pupils’ homes. It’s a far cry from the public school of the twenty-first century, where parents still sit on PTA boards but are also often (at least in the schools in my hometown of Riverside, California) literally kept off campus by lock and key. 

Whether state and federal governments will support school choice remains to be seen; there seems to be considerable political pressure in both directions. But on the social level, while we may continue to criticize each other’s school choices, increasing numbers of families seem unwilling to bypass choice. The fact that more than 11 percent of families were willing to at least temporarily embrace homeschooling during the height of the pandemic, for example, should be enough to convince us that American parents are not willing to be limited to merely one or two school options. Parental influence on local schooling is waning, but parents’ desire to have influence is not: parents want choices for their children’s education. While some public schools serve some children well, it is clear from the data that they do not serve most children well even on a merely academic level, and it’s not getting any better in most states (with the exception of some exciting reading gains in some parts of the South). 

Whatever the political discussion, it seems reasonable to expect that parental pressure for school choice will only increase. More and more parents seem to believe that in the twenty-first century, public school systems are, by and large, not good choices at all. 

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