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By Tressa Pankovits, Co-Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project

This is the 12^th year in which the final week of January has been designated National School Choice Week (SCW). The nonprofit that sponsors the celebration — 26,000 events this year — chose this particular week because, more than any other week of the year, this is when parents begin the process of searching for schools. The event is a campaign to draw attention to the fact that children have unique learning needs; therefore, children need unique educational opportunities.

National School Choice Week is celebrated locally with school fairs, parent information sessions, open houses and rallies. There are webinars and meetups. Governors sign proclamations. Students sport bright yellow and red scarves and teach each other a new school choice dance each year. There is an upbeat “kickoff video,” and 31 public buildings and monuments — including the Aloha Tower in Hawaii and Niagara Falls on the New York-Canadian border — will dazzle in yellow and red lights after dark.

This year, however, underneath the fun and fanfare, there is a serious message for Democrats. For years, public school systems have either disregarded parents or failed to encourage their engagement. Once the progressive champions of school reform, charter schools and other education innovations, many Democrats are now failing to listen to parents as well, at their own peril.

For almost two years, parents have had an unprecedented front-row-seat into their kids’ classrooms. Many haven’t liked what they saw. Many decided one-size-doesn’t fit all, after all. Many voted with their feet. Public charter school enrollment grew from school year 2019-2020 to the end 2020-2021 by nearly a quarter of a million students, while traditional public school enrollment declined by 1.7 million students. Home schooling, virtual schools, micro-pods, and other non-traditional models also contributed to traditional schools’ decline.

Currently, it seems there are almost as many studies documenting parents’ demand for more choices as there are studies documenting student learning loss.

Democrats for Education Reform found 81% of likely 2020 voters and 89% of Black voters supported school choice. A June poll from RealClear Opinion Research found a majority support school choice (74%). The National School Choice Week organization’s own early January study found that more than half of parents either already had or were considering switching schools. Additionally, in 2021, 22 states enacted or expanded — dramatically in some cases — school choice legislation.

But not all school choice is created equal. In each of the 22 states, 2021’s school choice legislation included some kind of voucher (sometimes called education tax credit or education savings account). This has long been a top priority for Republicans, so it’s not surprising that in 18 of the 22 states, the governor signing the bill into law was a Republican.

Vouchers sound great on the surface. “Fund students, not systems!” “Let the money follow the student!” These are common rallying cries. But there are problems with vouchers, not the least that widespread distribution of vouchers would effectively dismantle the free, universally available public education system that built America’s middle class into the envy of the world.

Vouchers come with two other major flaws, as Reinventing America’s Schools’ founder, David Osborne has long argued. First, vouchers offer no guarantee that kids will get a good education, because private schools are not accountable to any public body, the way public schools are (at least theoretically). Second, if vouchers are limited to those who live in poverty, they can enhance equal opportunity, but if their use is widespread, they will actually increase inequities. Parents who can afford it will add their own money to buy more expensive education for their kids and the education market will stratify by income, Osborne argues, like the housing market and every other market has. The outcome? Children will lose the chance to grow up learning next to children of different races, ethnic groups, and social classes. If that happens, imagine even how much more fragmented and polarized our country will become.

Public charter schools, or their cousin, autonomous partnership schools, are the better, more pragmatic form of choice. If charter or partnership schools do not live up to their charter or the performance metrics of their partnership contracts, the operator loses the school. That just happened in Indianapolis. Schools can be returned to the district, given to a different partner, or closed. This offers far superior accountability to vouchers — and, for that matter, traditional district schools, which are rarely voluntarily closed even after multiple years of abysmal performance — while offering parents choices and enhanced decision-making authority over their children’s education.

But Democratic leadership and political will is lacking to decentralize massive school bureaucracies into nimble, quick-to-adapt systems. In this vacuum, Republicans pushed through or inflated voucher in nearly half of the states in 2021 alone. Democrats – especially the progressive wing of the party — largely retreated into the arms of the teachers unions while letting parents’ cries for increased school choice fall on deaf ears.

As a result, parents didn’t just vote with their feet. In 2021, they voted at the polls as well. Just a year after Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Virginia 54% to 44%, Virginians elected Republican Glenn Youngkin, largely on education issues. Those issues included Youngkin’s promise to create 20 new charter schools in Virginia. And Youngkin may just do it. He needs just two Democratic defectors in the Senate to fulfill his charter school promise. This would be good news for Virginia students but bad news for Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Republican candidates around the country are seeking to emulate Youngkin’s playbook.

Some Democrats are starting to see the light. New Mexico House Representatives Meredith Dixon (D-Bernalillo)  and Joy Garratt (D-Albuquerque) recently co-sponsored a bill that would make it easier for charter schools to obtain facilities funding. Two Florida House Education Committees set politics aside to unanimously advance a bill that would make the charter renewal process fairer for charter schools. In Washington state, Representative Debra Entenman (D-Kent), formerly hostile to charter schools, introduced a bill to extend this year’s deadline for new charter schools to be authorized to 2027. And in Virginia, Senator Chap Peterson, who represents Fairfax, where remote learning was an exceptional mess and parents were extraordinarily angry, is on record as the likely first defector to help Governor Youngkin fulfill his charter school campaign promise.

None of this is enough for thousands of students on charter school waiting lists, of course. But it’s a start and pragmatic lawmakers like these should be celebrated. More should consider following their lead — if not for the kids, for their own political careers. National Charter School Week would be a great time to start.