Condoleezza Rice has called School Choice “the civil rights issue of our times.” The former Secretary of State, who is now head of Stanford University’s renowned Hoover Institution, explained recently what she means at an event held at The Reagan Presidential Library.
Jason Riley, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, tells us Ms. Rice spoke pointedly about the importance of school choice for low-income families. “We already have a choice system in education,” she said. “If you are of means, you will move to a district where the schools are good and the houses are expensive, like Palo Alto, Calif.” If you can afford it, she added, “you will send your kids to private school. So, who’s stuck in failing neighborhood schools? Poor kids. A lot of them minority kids.”
Ms. Rice expressed little patience for elites who criticize school choice for others while exercising it for their own kin. “How can you say you’re for civil rights—how can you say you’re for the poor—when you’re condemning those children to not being able to read?” she said. “If you want to say that school choice and vouchers and charter schools are destroying the public schools, fine. You write that editorial in the Washington Post. But then, don’t send your kids to Sidwell Friends,” the private school in Washington where tuition tops $55,000.
The good news is that school-reform advocates have made significant gains in recent years even though the current administration has been more hostile than its Democratic predecessors to educational choice. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama supported charters, as do large majorities of low-income minorities, but Joe Biden has disparaged school choice and has made it more difficult for charter operators to secure federal funding. The reason is Biden is beholden to the teachers unions because his wife Jill is a member!
But states are making progress. In 2023 Arkansas, Florida, Iowa and Ohio created or expanded programs that give underprivileged families more education options. Earlier this year, Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed the Choose Act, which creates education savings accounts that can be used for public schools, private schools, online schools or home schooling. And in Texas, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott overcame opposition from the teachers unions (and some antichoice Republicans) to secure a legislative majority in November that will allow the state to pass an ESA bill that failed last year.
Nevertheless, school-choice evangelists suffered a defeat last week in Oklahoma, where the state Supreme Court blocked plans to establish the country’s first religious charter school. Last year, an Oklahoma school board voted to approve a Catholic Archdiocese application to create the taxpayer-funded St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. State Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, sued to stop the school from opening, alleging that a contract between the state and a religious institution violated state and federal law.
In a 6-2 ruling, the court said Oklahoma’s constitution requires public schools, including charter schools, to be nonsectarian. The court also said that the contract violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the state from using public money to support a religious institution. A lawyer for St. Isidore told the Journal that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is in the works, and let’s hope so.
It’s hard to imagine anyone opposing school choice initiatives unless they are beholden to the teachers unions. School choice is the means to a productive future that should be available to all children, regardless of their economic status. If you oppose that, you are exposing your political bias and demonstrating you care more about the teachers union agenda than you do about the future of America’s children.
Just as civil rights became the issue of the 1960s, school choice has become the issue of the 21st century. It’s time everyone got on board this train.
