Alabama joined a growing list of states expanding school choice with the Creating Hope and Opportunity for Our Students’ Education (CHOOSE) Act of 2024. School choice is a game-changer, and universal school choice should boost learning, improve the quality of our workforce, and reduce inequality.
The CHOOSE Act creates education savings accounts (ESAs) beginning in 2025-26, and this money can be used for tuition and other qualifying expenses. Students attending a participating school will receive $7,000 from the state, while other enrollees (principally homeschoolers) get $2,000.
The first two years limit eligibility to families with incomes below three times the poverty level, but eligibility extends to all students in 2027-28, making Alabama’s school choice program universal. But the ESAs must be funded and the Act lists priority criteria if all applicants cannot be enrolled.
America’s public schools are woeful and doubling inflation-adjusted per student spending has not improved test scores nationwide. Even America’s best public schools are significantly overpriced, akin to $50 for a Big Mac.
Surely, though, more dollars must boost learning, right? With enough money we could have one teacher per student! Yet education economics demonstrate that increased spending does not improve learning outcomes. Research examining differences in spending across states or nations consistently shows this. The result reflects the dysfunction of public education bureaucracy; putting more money into a broken system does not improve learning.
We have witnessed significant increases in homeschooling and microschooling since the pandemic, and universal ESAs will supercharge such education innovation, allowing instruction to be tailored to numerous different learning styles.
Many current public-school teachers will, perhaps unexpectedly, also benefit in a competitive school market. Teachers able to attract and retain students will be much more valuable than in our system of captive students and state funding. Salaries for top teachers should rise in a competitive marketplace.
School choice should also over time reduce inequality. Wealthy families can already afford private school tuition or homes in the best school districts, but those forced to attend failing public schools may not even learn the basic skills necessary to enter the work force. Employer-provided training does boost wages – less than three percent of workers earn the minimum wage – but only if people have the skills to get hired in the first place. A competitive market will be more responsive to demands for vocational training, improving workforce skills.
Passing the CHOOSE Act does not end the struggle for school choice. As mentioned, lawmakers must appropriate sufficient funds. And funding must be maintained during future state budget crises.
Pushback against the ongoing school choice surge seems likely eventually. The pushback may come through the state seeking to impose conditions for eligibility for funding, or possibly by requiring standardized testing requirements and making students not scoring at grade level return to public schools. The government could describe such moves as avoiding wasting tax dollars on ineffective learning.
The issue is ultimately how to judge the success of school choice. Education scholar Kerry McDonald proposes relying on parental judgment, just as markets rely on consumer judgments. Parents care more about their children’s learning than anyone and should be able to judge basic learning. Competition for ESA dollars will help ensure quality as well. Standardized tests would reimpose educational bureaucracy control.
Alabamians can punish state officials who undermine school choice on election day, but the national scene is a different matter. Alabama’s congressional delegation is one of many in Washington, and unelected bureaucrats possess enormous power. National elites oppose empowering parents; a Harvard professor not long ago called for a nationwide homeschooling ban. The Biden administration’s transgender sports rules are just one illustration of Washington’s clout.
The U.S. Department of Education’s leverage arises from the dollars it sends to states. Yet less than 15% of K-12 education dollars come from Uncle Sam; indeed, states cede enormous control for relatively little money. Fiscal independence for Alabama education could be a realistic 10-year goal.
The emergence of government schools in the 19th century preceded government’s enormous growth in the 20th Century and our ongoing cultural decline. School choice empowers parents over bureaucrats. The battle is not over, but the CHOOSE Act should dramatically improve Alabama’s future.
Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Troy University or the policy or position of 1819 News.
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