For years, the national debate over “school choice” has rested on a powerful but misleading premise: that American families are eager to abandon public education.
That story has shaped a policy trajectory in education that orients our systems toward exclusion. It has justified the steady redirection of public dollars toward private schools, charter expansion, and voucher schemes. And it has fueled a privatization agenda now openly championed by corporate interests and advanced by Republican leaders and the Trump administration as a central education priority.
But it is not the story parents are telling.
In fact, for more than two decades, parents have been remarkably consistent: Roughly three-quarters of parents say they are satisfied with the quality of their child’s education, including nearly one-third who are completely satisfied. Only a small minority report deep dissatisfaction. Yet parents are far more pessimistic about the education system as a whole, a gap that underscores how national conversations about educational policy have engendered mistrust by ignoring what parents actually want.
That matters for how we understand school choice. In this commentary, we’ll disentangle the misapprehensions and misdirections that have isolated education policymakers from the questions they should be asking about the issue. And as a corrective, we’ll start asking the questions that are relevant to truly supporting the choices most parents are making.
What “School Choice” Really Means for Parents
Most families are not looking to abandon public education. In practice, even the families with the greatest “choice”—wealthy, predominantly white parents—choose to purchase homes in neighborhoods selected explicitly for access to high-performing public schools. And when less resourced parents reconsider their neighborhood school, they do so for practical reasons: a shorter commute, a safer environment, better school facilities, educators they can trust, and a program that fits their child’s needs, interests, and ambitions. They are not rejecting the idea of public schools: they are searching for quality, stability, and opportunity close to home.
In other words, “school choice” does not simply mean choosing alternatives to public education altogether: it means the opportunity to choose from a range of affordable, safe, and well-supported options that suit your child’s wants and needs. And in practice, of their available options, families are more likely than not to choose a public school (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1
Granted, such an opportunity remains limited or nonexistent for many families. But the key point there is not that public education lacks diverse choices, but that access to quality choices has been made uneven by race, income, and ZIP code. This is a systemic problem policy created, and a problem which purposefully designed policy can fix.
What policymakers should be asking is, “How can we make the schools that families are choosing the best they can be?”
This is where the school choice debate has gone badly wrong. What policymakers should be asking is, “How can we make the schools that families are choosing the best they can be?”
Divestment Trends Have Been About Politics, Not Good Schools
We don’t need to look far for examples of the difference such a reprioritization can make. The American Rescue Plan showed what is possible when public schools are finally given the resources they need: districts used federal dollars to repair long-neglected facilities, hire tutors, expand after-school programs, and invest in evidence-based reading, math, and mental-health supports that lessened the blow of the pandemic.
But policymakers have not learned from that example. Instead of asking how to strengthen the public schools families already rely on, federal policy has too often treated choice as an exit strategy that moves dollars out of neighborhood schools rather than investing in the kinds of public options that make those schools stronger. Choice has been framed not as a way to make much needed improvements to public education, but as a way to abandon it.
That framing is not accidental, and ultimately has origins in motivations irrelevant to education. It reflects a political project that shifts public resources toward private markets, weakens civil rights protections, and erodes the public institutions that serve most children.
Yet, more than 91 percent of K–12 students are enrolled in public schools, and roughly three-quarters attend traditional neighborhood public schools (figure 1). Far fewer attend private schools. Even in districts with robust charter sectors, most families are still served by their neighborhood public schools that taxpayers already fund and hold accountable. At a time when overall K–12 enrollment is declining and school systems are shrinking, the central policy question is not how to build parallel systems, but how to strengthen the schools that already educate the overwhelming majority of children.
If we are serious about honoring family choice, we must start from that reality.
The future of American education will not be built by abandoning public schools. It will be built by making them worthy of the choice families are already making.
Choice That Strengthens Public Education
Across the country, states and districts are already showing what real public school choice looks like. And a crucial piece of the picture is how diverse the choices really are when looking at public options.
Magnet schools, community schools, dual-language immersion programs, and dual-enrollment pathways offer families meaningful options without leaving the public system. These models expand opportunity, support integration, and improve outcomes, not by fragmenting public education, but by investing in it.
Magnet schools alone now serve 2.5 million students nationwide, more than two-thirds of whom are students of color. Decades of research show that diverse magnet schools are associated with higher academic achievement, stronger civic engagement, and greater social mobility. In places like Miami-Dade, Wake County, and Nashville, magnets have reversed enrollment declines and drawn families back to neighborhood schools.
Full-service community schools show a similar pattern. Research finds that when implemented well, they improve attendance, reduce suspensions, raise achievement, and strengthen school climate—with the largest gains for historically underserved students. Families choose these schools not because they are fleeing public education, but because the schools are designed around their communities’ real needs.
Dual-language immersion programs are among the most sought-after public options in many districts. Century Foundation research shows strong family demand across income and language groups, and long-term studies find academic benefits for both English learners and English-dominant students. These programs draw diverse families into shared schools that strengthen the public system and provide families choices that meet their individualized needs.
Dual-enrollment and early college high schools reduce the cost of college and raise completion rates, especially for traditionally underserved students. These schools include structured career and technical education pathways that combine rigorous coursework with industry partnerships and postsecondary credentials and connect students to high-demand fields. These schools are associated with higher graduation rates, stronger early employment outcomes, and increased earnings in early adulthood.
This is what public school choice looks like when it works.
While many of these models don’t exactly resemble traditional neighborhood schools, choosing one of them is not an escape from public education: it’s families thriving under the diversity of opportunity that comes from adequate investment. The goal is not competition for its own sake, but a system intentionally designed so all families can access high-quality public options without bearing disproportionate risk.
When Choice Is Illusory
Choice does not operate in a vacuum. For many low-income families and families of color, school choice systems not designed with them in mind are not experienced as freedom, but as an added burden layered onto already unequal systems. Research shows that the very act of choosing a school—which can require gathering information, visiting schools, and navigating complex lotteries—can carry real costs in time, money, and risk that many families cannot afford.
Without high-quality neighborhood options, school choice is not a choice at all.
For Black and Latino families, choice is further shaped by racism and exclusion. Families are not only searching for strong academics, but for schools where their children will be safe, respected, and free from bias. Studies describe a process marked by anxiety, vigilance, and constant compromise. In these contexts, choice is not empowering. It is constrained by the same inequalities that structure access to opportunity in the first place. Real choice means being able to live in the community that works for your family, with confidence that the neighborhood public school offers strong academics, enrichment opportunities, safety, and respect. Without high-quality neighborhood options, school choice is not a choice at all.
A Federal Agenda Families Did Not Ask For
Despite research and demand, federal policy is now moving in the opposite direction. In 2025, the Department of Education redirected an additional $60 million to the Charter Schools Program, one of the department’s largest competitive K–12 grant programs, without new congressional authorization. This move did not reflect rising demand for charter start-up and expansion grants, which has declined in recent years, and for good reason: multiple grantees have failed to open schools as planned and awards have been reduced because fewer schools were opened than projected. Yet the Trump administration shifted funds away from other public school options and into an enlarged charter budget, even as high-demand programs like Full-Service Community Schools and school-based mental health grants faced cancellations and uncertainty.
At the same time, the administration abruptly canceled nineteen Full-Service Community Schools grants serving more than 700,000 students across 1,600 schools nationwide. These cuts affected districts in at least eleven states, including rural communities, and eliminated funding for around 200 counselors, coordinators, tutors, and family liaisons whose work anchors academic recovery and student support in high-poverty schools.
Instead of investing in evidence-based strategies that support neighborhood schools, the federal government is robbing students of opportunity by investing in schools that serve corporate interests. Research shows that these programs do not help the vast majority of students. For example, universal voucher and education savings account (ESA) programs in Arizona and Florida have become cautionary tales. These programs have drained state budgets, weakened oversight, and diverted public dollars to families who were already in private schools. In Arizona, the program now costs nearly $1 billion a year, contributing to a broader budget crisis. In Florida, auditors could not account for $270 million in voucher funds.
These state experiments are now the model for a new federal voucher initiative advanced by congressional Republicans and embraced by the Trump administration. This new program is a massive tax-credit scheme that would redirect tens of billions of dollars from public schools to private markets.
Too often, the school choice debate assumes there is unlimited public funding and political will to simultaneously invest in neighborhood schools and subsidize private alternatives. In reality, public resources are finite, and every dollar diverted away from public schools is a dollar no longer available to strengthen the schools most families rely on.
This is not what families asked for. It is what privatization advocates want. And it is a direct threat to civil rights.
Private schools receiving public funds are not bound by the same civil rights laws, disability protections, or accountability standards as public schools. And families are often not told which rights they forfeit when they leave the public system. Students with disabilities and underserved students of color are the first to lose protections, and, too often, the first to be pushed out.
Reclaiming School Choice With Evidence, Not Ideology: Where to Start
If federal and state leaders truly want to honor family choice, they should invest where the evidence is strongest and where parents’ priorities are clearest, rather than subsidizing privatization schemes that benefit the already wealthy.
- Invest in evidence-based early literacy and math so every child learns to read and builds strong foundations in numeracy through high-quality curricula, teacher training aligned to the science of reading, and early interventions when students fall behind.
- Expand high-quality early childhood education, which decades of research show improves reading, math, graduation rates, and long-term economic mobility, especially for children from low-income families.
- Scale proven public school models, including community schools, magnets, dual-language programs, and early college high schools, that improve outcomes while strengthening integration and opportunity.
- Target federal dollars to what works and to students with the greatest need by using funding formulas and strong accountability systems to close academic and opportunity gaps, rather than diverting public funds to programs with weak evidence, declining demand, and minimal civil rights protections.
These are not untested frameworks or solutions. States and districts across the country are already implementing them, improving reading, raising graduation rates, and expanding opportunity in public schools that serve all children. We should follow their lead.
Policymakers have a choice here of their own. We can continue to pour public dollars into privatization schemes that fragment systems, weaken civil rights, and drain resources from the schools most families depend on. Or we can reclaim school choice as what it should have always been: a commitment to building strong, equitable, high-quality public schools in every community.
Tags: charter schools, public school, private schools, educational equity
To Reclaim School Choice, Invest in the Public Schools Families Choose Every Day
For years, the national debate over “school choice” has rested on a powerful but misleading premise: that American families are eager to abandon public education.
That story has shaped a policy trajectory in education that orients our systems toward exclusion. It has justified the steady redirection of public dollars toward private schools, charter expansion, and voucher schemes. And it has fueled a privatization agenda now openly championed by corporate interests and advanced by Republican leaders and the Trump administration as a central education priority.
But it is not the story parents are telling.
In fact, for more than two decades, parents have been remarkably consistent: Roughly three-quarters of parents say they are satisfied with the quality of their child’s education, including nearly one-third who are completely satisfied. Only a small minority report deep dissatisfaction. Yet parents are far more pessimistic about the education system as a whole, a gap that underscores how national conversations about educational policy have engendered mistrust by ignoring what parents actually want.
That matters for how we understand school choice. In this commentary, we’ll disentangle the misapprehensions and misdirections that have isolated education policymakers from the questions they should be asking about the issue. And as a corrective, we’ll start asking the questions that are relevant to truly supporting the choices most parents are making.
What “School Choice” Really Means for Parents
Most families are not looking to abandon public education. In practice, even the families with the greatest “choice”—wealthy, predominantly white parents—choose to purchase homes in neighborhoods selected explicitly for access to high-performing public schools. And when less resourced parents reconsider their neighborhood school, they do so for practical reasons: a shorter commute, a safer environment, better school facilities, educators they can trust, and a program that fits their child’s needs, interests, and ambitions. They are not rejecting the idea of public schools: they are searching for quality, stability, and opportunity close to home.
In other words, “school choice” does not simply mean choosing alternatives to public education altogether: it means the opportunity to choose from a range of affordable, safe, and well-supported options that suit your child’s wants and needs. And in practice, of their available options, families are more likely than not to choose a public school (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1
Granted, such an opportunity remains limited or nonexistent for many families. But the key point there is not that public education lacks diverse choices, but that access to quality choices has been made uneven by race, income, and ZIP code. This is a systemic problem policy created, and a problem which purposefully designed policy can fix.
This is where the school choice debate has gone badly wrong. What policymakers should be asking is, “How can we make the schools that families are choosing the best they can be?”
Divestment Trends Have Been About Politics, Not Good Schools
We don’t need to look far for examples of the difference such a reprioritization can make. The American Rescue Plan showed what is possible when public schools are finally given the resources they need: districts used federal dollars to repair long-neglected facilities, hire tutors, expand after-school programs, and invest in evidence-based reading, math, and mental-health supports that lessened the blow of the pandemic.
But policymakers have not learned from that example. Instead of asking how to strengthen the public schools families already rely on, federal policy has too often treated choice as an exit strategy that moves dollars out of neighborhood schools rather than investing in the kinds of public options that make those schools stronger. Choice has been framed not as a way to make much needed improvements to public education, but as a way to abandon it.
That framing is not accidental, and ultimately has origins in motivations irrelevant to education. It reflects a political project that shifts public resources toward private markets, weakens civil rights protections, and erodes the public institutions that serve most children.
Yet, more than 91 percent of K–12 students are enrolled in public schools, and roughly three-quarters attend traditional neighborhood public schools (figure 1). Far fewer attend private schools. Even in districts with robust charter sectors, most families are still served by their neighborhood public schools that taxpayers already fund and hold accountable. At a time when overall K–12 enrollment is declining and school systems are shrinking, the central policy question is not how to build parallel systems, but how to strengthen the schools that already educate the overwhelming majority of children.
If we are serious about honoring family choice, we must start from that reality.
The future of American education will not be built by abandoning public schools. It will be built by making them worthy of the choice families are already making.
Choice That Strengthens Public Education
Across the country, states and districts are already showing what real public school choice looks like. And a crucial piece of the picture is how diverse the choices really are when looking at public options.
Magnet schools, community schools, dual-language immersion programs, and dual-enrollment pathways offer families meaningful options without leaving the public system. These models expand opportunity, support integration, and improve outcomes, not by fragmenting public education, but by investing in it.
Magnet schools alone now serve 2.5 million students nationwide, more than two-thirds of whom are students of color. Decades of research show that diverse magnet schools are associated with higher academic achievement, stronger civic engagement, and greater social mobility. In places like Miami-Dade, Wake County, and Nashville, magnets have reversed enrollment declines and drawn families back to neighborhood schools.
Full-service community schools show a similar pattern. Research finds that when implemented well, they improve attendance, reduce suspensions, raise achievement, and strengthen school climate—with the largest gains for historically underserved students. Families choose these schools not because they are fleeing public education, but because the schools are designed around their communities’ real needs.
Dual-language immersion programs are among the most sought-after public options in many districts. Century Foundation research shows strong family demand across income and language groups, and long-term studies find academic benefits for both English learners and English-dominant students. These programs draw diverse families into shared schools that strengthen the public system and provide families choices that meet their individualized needs.
Dual-enrollment and early college high schools reduce the cost of college and raise completion rates, especially for traditionally underserved students. These schools include structured career and technical education pathways that combine rigorous coursework with industry partnerships and postsecondary credentials and connect students to high-demand fields. These schools are associated with higher graduation rates, stronger early employment outcomes, and increased earnings in early adulthood.
This is what public school choice looks like when it works.
While many of these models don’t exactly resemble traditional neighborhood schools, choosing one of them is not an escape from public education: it’s families thriving under the diversity of opportunity that comes from adequate investment. The goal is not competition for its own sake, but a system intentionally designed so all families can access high-quality public options without bearing disproportionate risk.
When Choice Is Illusory
Choice does not operate in a vacuum. For many low-income families and families of color, school choice systems not designed with them in mind are not experienced as freedom, but as an added burden layered onto already unequal systems. Research shows that the very act of choosing a school—which can require gathering information, visiting schools, and navigating complex lotteries—can carry real costs in time, money, and risk that many families cannot afford.
For Black and Latino families, choice is further shaped by racism and exclusion. Families are not only searching for strong academics, but for schools where their children will be safe, respected, and free from bias. Studies describe a process marked by anxiety, vigilance, and constant compromise. In these contexts, choice is not empowering. It is constrained by the same inequalities that structure access to opportunity in the first place. Real choice means being able to live in the community that works for your family, with confidence that the neighborhood public school offers strong academics, enrichment opportunities, safety, and respect. Without high-quality neighborhood options, school choice is not a choice at all.
A Federal Agenda Families Did Not Ask For
Despite research and demand, federal policy is now moving in the opposite direction. In 2025, the Department of Education redirected an additional $60 million to the Charter Schools Program, one of the department’s largest competitive K–12 grant programs, without new congressional authorization. This move did not reflect rising demand for charter start-up and expansion grants, which has declined in recent years, and for good reason: multiple grantees have failed to open schools as planned and awards have been reduced because fewer schools were opened than projected. Yet the Trump administration shifted funds away from other public school options and into an enlarged charter budget, even as high-demand programs like Full-Service Community Schools1 and school-based mental health grants faced cancellations and uncertainty.
At the same time, the administration abruptly canceled nineteen Full-Service Community Schools grants serving more than 700,000 students across 1,600 schools nationwide. These cuts affected districts in at least eleven states, including rural communities, and eliminated funding for around 200 counselors, coordinators, tutors, and family liaisons whose work anchors academic recovery and student support in high-poverty schools.
Instead of investing in evidence-based strategies that support neighborhood schools, the federal government is robbing students of opportunity by investing in schools that serve corporate interests. Research shows that these programs do not help the vast majority of students. For example, universal voucher and education savings account (ESA) programs in Arizona and Florida have become cautionary tales. These programs have drained state budgets, weakened oversight, and diverted public dollars to families who were already in private schools. In Arizona, the program now costs nearly $1 billion a year, contributing to a broader budget crisis. In Florida, auditors could not account for $270 million in voucher funds.
These state experiments are now the model for a new federal voucher initiative advanced by congressional Republicans and embraced by the Trump administration. This new program is a massive tax-credit scheme that would redirect tens of billions of dollars from public schools to private markets.
Too often, the school choice debate assumes there is unlimited public funding and political will to simultaneously invest in neighborhood schools and subsidize private alternatives. In reality, public resources are finite, and every dollar diverted away from public schools is a dollar no longer available to strengthen the schools most families rely on.
This is not what families asked for. It is what privatization advocates want. And it is a direct threat to civil rights.
Private schools receiving public funds are not bound by the same civil rights laws, disability protections, or accountability standards as public schools. And families are often not told which rights they forfeit when they leave the public system. Students with disabilities and underserved students of color are the first to lose protections, and, too often, the first to be pushed out.
Reclaiming School Choice With Evidence, Not Ideology: Where to Start
If federal and state leaders truly want to honor family choice, they should invest where the evidence is strongest and where parents’ priorities are clearest, rather than subsidizing privatization schemes that benefit the already wealthy.
These are not untested frameworks or solutions. States and districts across the country are already implementing them, improving reading, raising graduation rates, and expanding opportunity in public schools that serve all children. We should follow their lead.
Policymakers have a choice here of their own. We can continue to pour public dollars into privatization schemes that fragment systems, weaken civil rights, and drain resources from the schools most families depend on. Or we can reclaim school choice as what it should have always been: a commitment to building strong, equitable, high-quality public schools in every community.
Notes
Tags: charter schools, public school, private schools, educational equity