Education freedom allows parents to choose the school or other learning avenue that best fits their unique child. Nothing will impact the future of our country more than the education of the next generation. How much do you know about school choice in the states? Let’s play “Two Truths and a Lie” to find out!
A. Public education is failing the vast majority of students.
B. Education freedom is spreading across the country.
C. Teachers unions support school choice.

Let’s take these statements one at a time:

A. Truth! There are 52 million public school students and 6.77 million employees. Despite spending nearly $1 trillion annually—averaging almost $19,000 per student per year, 77% of K-12 public school students exit their 13 years of schooling, failing to achieve proficiency averaged across academic subjects. On the world stage, students in the United States are not competitive with their international peers, with 15-year-old students placing 9th in reading, 16th in science, and 34th in math.
The public is not only disappointed by the public schools’ astronomical spending and lack of return on investment; it is also concerned about the lack of time spent on core academic learning and how a far-left progressive political agenda infiltrates school instruction.

B. Truth! There is strong support for school choice across the political aisle. As of March 2024, 74% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans supported education savings accounts. Twelve states—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia—have enacted universal or near-universal school choice. This empowers parents to select an education avenue for their child outside the government-run, teacher union-controlled public education system.

As of 2020, less than 1% of the more than 52 million K-12 public school students in the U.S. had access to a school choice program, and zero states had K-12 universal or near-universal school choice. Fewer than 500,000 students were eligible to exit the public education system unless their parents had thousands of dollars a year for tuition money or were able to homeschool. Now, roughly 18.9 million students have access to funding so their parents can select the learning avenue that will best serve their unique child.

C. Lie!  The teacher unions use a large portion of teachers’ money collected from member dues to to influence politics by allocating money to political campaigns, which are almost exclusively to a single political party—the Democratic Party. The second largest teachers union—the American Federation of Teachers, with 1.8 million members—allocated 99.99% of campaign contributions in the 2022 election cycle and 99.1% in the 2024 election cycle to Democrats.

Democratic policymakers reward the teachers unions with political power. They attempt to block parents from having options outside of the public education system for their children because keeping families captive to public education maintains as many teachers as possible who pay member dues that serve their political careers and agendas.

Bottom line:

The historical education freedom legislative wins over the past four years must continue until all children in our nation have access to school choice. There is a timely opportunity for education entrepreneurs to create new schools, new school models, and a host of education services.

To learn more, read the Policy Focus on School Choice in the States.