School Choice Should Be Part Of Modern Civil Rights Movement

Denisha Merriweather grew up in a poor neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida with poor grades and a bad attitude, and was ready to drop out of school as early as 4^th grade. But, as she eloquently told her story in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, her life took a dramatic turn for the better through the support of her godmother and a tax credit scholarship for low-income students. She was able to attend private school where she later graduated with honors. As the first member of her family to attend college, she recently earned a bachelor’s degree and is on her way to graduate school.

Florida public schools have a statewide average of 34.3 percent of students testing at or above average proficiency in reading and math according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which ranks in the middle of the pack in the nation. However, the public schools in Jacksonville, where Denisha grew up, have struggled to keep up with the rest of the state, scoring below the state average. One of the contributing factors dragging down test scores of American students is known as the black-white test-score gap. Test scores, both nationally and in Florida, continue to show a substantial gap between the nation’s white students and poor and minority students.

Year after year national test scores show a substantial achievement gap between those students in majority white and affluent districts and the nation’s poor white and minority students. Despite over 30 years of federal and state laws crafted to close the gap, there is no evidence that these laws are working.

The solution for educational achievement afforded Denisha is the same solution being denied poor and minority students across the nation. Many federal and state elected officials and education bureaucrats in the back pocket of the national and state teacher unions and with the means to put their own children in the most elite private schools, subject both poor and minority parents and children to underperforming public schools.

Every January, conservative champions of school choice devote an entire week to promoting parental rights to provide their children the best education possible. The U.S. Senate this week unanimously passed a resolution recognizing National School Choice Week. However, the words “school choice” were rarely if at all uttered during 2016 election cycle.

Luckily, the victory of Donald Trump and his nomination of Betsy DeVos for U.S. Secretary of Education, has brought the issue once again to the top of the national debate on education. Ms. DeVos has been a longtime advocate for school choice in her home state of Michigan and across the nation. She has successfully fought for the establishment of public charter schools and private school vouchers for poor and minority families.

Far too many members of Congress, Governors, and state legislators, in coordination with the National Education Association, have collectively shown they are more interested in political grandstanding and protecting their campaign contributions from dues paying public school teachers than educating our children. Sen. Corey Booker, a onetime ally of Betsy DeVos and the charter school movement, couldn’t run fast enough to the nearest camera to turn his back on poor and minority families to show his support for his political bosses at the NEA by attacking DeVos. The system they are struggling so hard to protect condemns many low-income and minority parents and students to failing or mediocre school districts.

The best way to close the gap in educational achievement is to allow poor and minority students who are stuck in failing public schools to receive taxpayer funding to transfer to higher performing charter and private schools. The one policy that has been proven effective in state after state is the establishment of charter schools and voucher programs like the tax credit scholarship program that allowed Denisha to thrive.

There has never been in our history a single African-American or Hispanic child born in America who is less capable and intelligent than a white child. Just as we celebrate the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and continue the struggle that leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for, its time to put the same energy and resources into closing the educational achievement gap.

No child, whether wealthy or poor, white, black, Asian, or Hispanic, should be condemned to a poor education, and low-income and minority parents should have the opportunity to change their child’s circumstances in life through a better education afforded by more and better choices in schools.