How Public Schools Can Survive And Thrive In An Era Of School Choice

Forbes

21-03-2025

Public schools have been facing major enrollment and – thanks to state per-pupil funding – revenue challenges. Covid closures led to dramatic drops in the largest districts. Add in low birth rates and unaffordable housing and the exodus of students has left many urban districts practically unrecognizable. Los Angeles Unified currently enrolls just over 400,000 students, down by nearly half in 20 years. A February Gallup 'Mood of the Nation' poll found that only 24% of Americans are satisfied with public K-12 education – the lowest since the survey began in 2001 and the third-lowest level of satisfaction with any category of public life, behind healthcare, taxes, and the influence of corporations and only ahead of how we're dealing with homelessness and 'the moral and ethical climate.'
Districts have fought back by offering choices. Magnet schools and immersion programs are popular strategies. Open enrollment has become more prevalent. And some districts have tried to brand public schools as charters by providing limited autonomy even though the buildings are district buildings and teachers are card-carrying union members.
But most parents have real choice in other important areas of their lives and know what that looks like. So we're seeing something of a K-12 awakening. In another poll, 60% of parents say that last year they considered moving their child to another school with 28% claiming they followed through. Where are public school students going? The most popular choice was private or faith-based schools. That's a sea change from just two years earlier when the top three alternatives were public schools in the neighborhood, public schools outside the neighborhood, and charter schools. So it's likely that the biggest education story of the 2020s isn't the Trump administration's capricious crackdowns, the fall of college for all, or the rise of apprenticeships and earn-and-learn pathways, but rather the sudden shift in K-12 education from false agency to real agency.
An endangered species?
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For as long as I can remember, the K-12 dynamic has always been 'bad system, but I like my kid's school and teacher.' So why the sudden shift? Perhaps because parents recognize their kids can't read books: that a system that has long prioritized learning styles and theories of pedagogy over content knowledge is neither producing equity nor – outside of a handful of urban magnets and a few dozen wealthy suburban districts that run private-like schools – excellence. Whatever the source, it's been fueled by the rapid rise of Education Savings Accounts.
What used to be called vouchers are now Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) – a 529 plan-vibe, except the 'savings' aren't savings at all: it's state funding that won't be going to school districts. Nearly universal now in red states and making inroads in blue ones like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, ESAs provide up to $16K per student per year for schooling, which some states define as private and parochial schools and others – I'm looking at you Florida and Arizona – allow to be used for homeschooling curriculum and anything that can be construed as educational, like trampolines or go-karts.
Defenders argue ESAs are merely responsive to the choice parents want. But none deny that the effect has been to shift public dollars to religious schools. Among the largest ESA states, the percentage of ESA students attending faith-based schools ranges from 82% in Florida to 96% in Wisconsin. Since 77% of private school enrollment is at sectarian schools, more public funding for ESAs means more public funding for religion, at least until education entrepreneurs get to work.
I'm no fan of spending taxpayer dollars on religion. But there's little sense in safeguarding an ineffective K-12 status quo, particularly for students without wealth or social capital. I also recognize that America's current system is an outlier. Growing up in Toronto, there was a separate Catholic school board funded by the Province. I didn't attend those schools (my parents exercised false agency by sending me to a French immersion program at the closest public school), but I could have. In the Netherlands, only 30% of children attend public schools; 70% attend private and parochial schools supported by the state. In England, state-funded Anglican schools compete for students with notable success. What Johns Hopkins' Ashley Rogers-Berner calls 'educational pluralism' is the norm in 80%+ of countries (171 out of 204 by UNESCO's count).
As with much else, America used to be in the majority. Through the mid-19th century, governments funded all kinds of schools until concerns about immigration and assimilation resulted in the defunding of sectarian schools. Rogers-Berner points out that while the goal was neutral public schools, they weren't that neutral; they were Protestant schools that used Protestant bibles and led students in Protestant prayers. But over the course of the 20th century, in schools as in society, Protestantism gave way to secularism, punctuated by the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman which held it was unconstitutional for Pennsylvania and Rhode Island to subsidize teacher salaries at religious schools. So is the problem with public education that schools have become anodyne and antiseptic, focused on pedagogy over content knowledge and love of reading books, soulless and viewless?
Catholic schools outperform public schools on standardized tests and tout that values-based education helps students develop a sense of purpose beyond themselves and produces stronger citizens. Self-selection plays a role here. But why might education that departs from a prescribed place be more successful than viewpoint-neutral education? While I've never attended a religious institution, in college I recall a stark difference between English courses that asked students how they interpreted or felt about a text – leading to plenty of irrelevant discussion and talking past one another – and Literature courses that asked students how a theory or theorist would interpret a text. In the latter, there was more meaningful debate, mind-meeting, and mind-melding. But achieving this required a collective, tangible reference point more defined than worshipping at the altar of critical thinking, however worthy that might be. It seems likely that the most motivated and prepared students do fine in a viewpoint-neutral setting, but not those with the furthest to go.
By trying to make public education neutral, we may have neutered it. Magnets, immersion programs, and charter schools add flavors to public education but hardly cover the waterfront of interests and passions. Why shouldn't tax dollars fund any school that excels at helping students gain content knowledge and skills as long as the viewpoint in question isn't harmful, and particularly if it encourages students to serve a broader (but not exclusive) community? That doesn't have to mean faith-based, at least in the traditional sense. How about a tech- or AI-first school? Or an affordable and decidedly less magical Hogwarts Academy? If we want public schools to send students somewhere, it makes sense to start somewhere.
As states progress along the path of real school choice and competition becomes the new normal for most parents – particularly those in the fastest growing states – the risk is that we blow school districts out of the water. Which is what many Republicans have in mind in pushing for a tax credit – not a deduction – for donations to ESA programs. If enacted, this would divert tax revenue to private schools, privilege ESAs over other philanthropy, and provide billions of dollars for a mass departure from school districts. As it's non-economic to run schools with fewer than 100 students, the result would be school closures and hollowed-out districts. It would be revenue on public schools, the teachers they employ, and the unions they fund.
Consistent with other wild policy pendulum swings, the ESA arc has the potential to destroy public education as we know it. But if school choice advocates are honest, they'll acknowledge we need a strong, public, non-sectarian, neutral option. It's just that making it the only or default option hasn't worked. Parents won't have real choice without a healthy, thriving public school in their community.
With states vying to spend more on ESAs and the Supreme Court preparing to rule on the constitutionality of a proposed Catholic charter school in Oklahoma, the operating principle has to be balance. States able to balance real school choice with maintaining healthy school districts will usher in a golden age of differentiation and innovation. States that tilt too far in one direction – choice for choice's sake without regard to the impact on public schools or mindlessly defending a status quo that is less effective and popular than ever – will harm more students than they help.
Finding a Goldilocks solution is more easily said than done. What is cutting too deep and what's not enough? As a basic framework, it's not enough when cuts don't require districts to innovate to the point of successfully competing for students against ESA-supported private, parochial, technological, and magical competition. And it's too much when public school enrollment goes into freefall, decimating districts and boosting inequality as property tax-funded schools in rich communities are unaffected but state-funded schools suffer. The problem is that there may be no turning back in the latter scenario. This is why increased funding for ESAs and concomitant public school cuts can only be done in a measured manner. Unlike the Trump administration's current approach to education and everything else, no axe swinging when kids' futures are at stake.