Last month’s first meeting of the House Select Committee on “Education Freedom” had only school choice proponents on the agenda. At today’s meeting, half of the speakers were school choice proponents – better, though not altogether a balanced representation.
One of today’s speakers, Erika Donalds, extolled the “free market” virtues of school choice, and she practices what she preaches. A Moms for Liberty board member and self-described “education entrepreneur,” she has opened six charter schools in Florida and a for-profit “education experience” company that operates online and virtual-reality schools.
The other pro-school choice speaker, Dr. Patrick Wolf, serves as the Endowed Chair in School Choice in the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform. In his remarks, he downplayed the importance of student achievement in voucher programs, claiming, “How far you go is more important than how much you know.”
Biloxi Superintendent Marcus Boudreaux pointed out that private schools exist because they don’t want to be subject to the regulations that accompany public funds, and he did a great job of laying out all the ways that public schools are held publicly accountable and private schools are not.
The bottom line is this: every school that benefits from public funds should operate under the same set of rules. Same assessments, same public accountability, same fiscal scrutiny, same admissions policies…same rules.
Mississippi is outperforming the entire country in academic gains on national assessments while every single state that EdChoice lists as a “Top 10 State for School Choice” is declining. Why on earth would we adopt the failed policies that are taking other states backward?
Kudos to the Mississippi legislators who are siding with their constituents and our public schools to keep Mississippi strong! Together, we’ve got this.
