Posted on by Californiacontrarian

A Choice ? . . . We’ll See


Will the issue of school choice be relevant in the choice that some voters make in the upcoming election? I guess that we’ll see.

For the uninformed, the term “school choice” means giving parents the power and opportunity to choose the schools their children attend. Traditionally, children are assigned to a public school according to where they live. People of greater economic means already have school choice, because they can afford to move to an area with high quality public schools, or to enroll their children in private schools. Parents without such means, until recently, generally had no school choices, and had to send their children to the schools assigned to them by the district, regardless of the schools’ quality or appropriateness for their children.

The following is from the website of the U.S. Department of Education in early October of this year:

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, alongside Sen. Tim Scott and members of the White House Domestic Policy Council, participated in a call with African American leaders this week on the importance of education freedom and how the “School Choice Now Act” could expand educational options and opportunities for African American students.

“African Americans, and all Americans, need more opportunities to grow, to develop, and to prosper, and that all starts with a great education. President Trump and I are fighting every day for more options for every student and every family across America,” Secretary DeVos told participants. “Under the President’s leadership, we’ve lit a prairie fire across America for parental school choice. Countless surveys show that more families today support parental choice than ever before. Notably, a very recent RealClear Opinion survey found that 73% of African American families want their education dollars to follow their children to wherever they go to learn. Three out of four families with children in public schools want the same thing.”

Sen. Tim Scott thanked Secretary DeVos for her leadership on school choice initiatives and for her support of the “School Choice Now Act” which was included in the most recent Senate COVID-19 relief package. Sen. Scott called the issue of school choice “personal,” noting that he grew up in a single-parent home below the poverty line with limited access to a quality education.     

“The commitment to education is not a political one,” Sen. Scott said. “The commitment to education is to ensure that the American dream is alive even for the poorest Americans.”

The call engaged a broad audience of African American community leaders and school choice advocates from across the country to discuss the importance of school choice in the African American community, especially for low income families.

Now one might ask why I am writing about school choice just a few days before the upcoming election. 

Is there anyone who does not believe that educating poor children in better schools is good not only for these children, but also in fact, good for our society in general?

As a matter of fact there is . . . Joe Biden does not believe in school choice. The Democrats do not believe in school choice.

On the other hand President Trump is a strong believer in better schools for the less fortunate. He has made this one of his campaign promises, and as we all know, he keeps his promises. 

Who else should be backers of school choice? I would think that the economically disadvantaged parents of poor children would be on board for their children getting a better education . . . but are they?

We’ll see.

Interestingly in the 2018 Florida governor’s race between the black challenger, Andrew Gillum, and the incumbent Ron DeSantis,, the issue of the school choice program in Florida (vouchers) was a major issue. In fact it was the vote of young black women that surprisingly put DeSantis over the top. Almost all of the pre-election polls had predicted a relatively easy win for Gillum. (Trafalgar was the outlier.)

Just like in Florida in 2018, I see a shift in the voting pattern of young black women towards Trump and school choice in the upcoming election. How big of a shift? 

We’ll see.

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