America Needs Real School Choice

School choice is sweeping the nation. But school choice as we know it won’t fix the American education system. The movement must return to Milton Friedman’s vision of unfettered competition, which no existing school-choice program achieves. Friedman wanted parents to have the autonomy to select the optimal educational environment for their children, unbounded by geography or income brackets, and to take their full allotment of education funds with them.

With the wind at their backs, school-choice advocates must be bolder and refuse to settle for half a loaf. The underlying problems in U.S. education demand it. Despite being the world’s most prosperous nation, the U.S. ranks 36th in math and 13th in reading on the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment, a poor showing driven in part by racial achievement gaps. Despite decades of initiatives to close those gaps, black and Hispanic students lag behind their white peers in academics, graduation rates and college enrollment.