The (Education) Empire Strikes Back

Unleash Prosperity Hotline: Stephen Moore  – The school year starts as early as next week across the country, and the education blob is having a panic attack that more and more children are now taking advantage of their option to leave public schools. Thanks to school choice victories, as many as an additional million kids will be enrolled in charters, private, or Catholic or religious schools this fall.

The Washington Post thinks that’s a bad thing. They published a front-page hit piece last week on the Arizona choice program, arguing so many kids are switching to private alternative schools that failing public schools in Phoenix may have to shut down. One school closing its doors is Roosevelt Elementary. The Post says the community is going through a “grieving process,” and some families are “heart broken.”  The school librarian pouts it feels like “death.”

Not to the parents whose kids have gained access to better schools. They're feeling liberated. 

We’re scratching our heads trying to figure out why it’s a bad thing that low-income families now have access to superior private schools.

This would be like complaining that a popular Whole Foods grocery store has moved into town and now the crappy grocery store down the street has to go out of business.
 
Apparently, the left's philosophy is that only kids from rich families should have access to great schools.

Buried deep in the Post story is an admission that “just 13% of students districtwide ranked proficient or better in math in 2023-24.” Amazingly, half of these schools are graded by the district as A or B schools. 

Would you send your kids to a school where only one in six students are learning basic math?