The reason for this success isn’t hard to fathom. During the pandemic, mediocre remote learning, bureaucratic inertia, and school closures taught many parents that they couldn’t count on school districts when families needed them most.
Parents were left hungry for alternatives, especially amidst bitter disagreements over masking and woke ideology. This was all immensely practical. It wasn’t about moral imperatives or market abstractions. It was about empowering families to put their kids in schools that address their needs, reflect their values, and do their job. And it came even as families continued to voice support for their local public schools.
There are important lessons here, several of which I discuss at more length in The Great School Rethink. The biggest may be the simplest: Families can want more options and still like their local schools.
Polling consistently shows that the lion’s share of parents say they’d grade their kids’ schools an A or a B. At the same time, last year, more than seven in ten endorsed education savings accounts, school vouchers, and charter schools.In short, parents tend to like both their child’s public school and school choice policies. They don’t see a tension between the two.