What Teachers Unions Don’t Want You to Know about School Choice
Growing up in North Philadelphia’s notorious Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, Anthony Samuels saw his share of violence.
“The first time I saw a shootout with my own eyes, I was nine years old,” he recalls. “When I was ten, I saw my first drug transaction. When I was eleven, it was the first time I saw someone get killed. And it wasn’t the last.”
Strawberry Mansion High School ranks as one of the most dangerous schools in the country. And despite the Philadelphia School District’s spending nearly $30,000 per student per year in district-operated public schools, the latest data from the Nation’s Report Card shows student performance in the city is lower than students in most other large cities. Last year, 81 percent of Philadelphia fourth-grade students were not proficient in math, while 83 percent were not proficient in reading. Among Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students, the numbers were even higher.
Because of his zip code, Anthony was on track to attend Strawberry Mansion High School. But his life forever changed thanks to Pennsylvania’s tax credit scholarship program, which his mother used to send him to a safe, quality private school.
What happened to the thousands of dollars that would have been spent on Anthony’s public school education each year? It stayed with the Philadelphia School District, even as Anthony left.
This baffling scenario is not unique to Philadelphia or Pennsylvania.
Across the country, school choice is growing. Thirty years ago, approximately 10,000 students participated in private school choice programs in the United States, but now that number is more than one million, according to data compiled by EdChoice.
But as more families opt for non-traditional schooling options, most of the money allotted for their education stays with their zip code-assigned public school. In some cases, the school keeps all the money, retaining thousands of dollars for each student they no longer teach.
Additionally, many states have what’s known as “hold harmless” provisions baked into their funding formulas. Hold harmless guarantees school districts at least the same amount of state revenue each year as the prior year, regardless of enrollment numbers, which have been declining in multiple states.
Yet, even as enrollment falls, test scores drop, and students leave, teachers’ unions and public-school administrators continually clamor for even more money, arguing it’s the panacea for public education’s failures.
History reveals something much different.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, from 2013-2022, inflation-adjusted revenue per pupil increased by nearly 25 percent, a continuation of a decades-long trend of increased education spending.
But the newest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—which measures learning at fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades nationwide—revealed that 69% of fourth-grade students and 70% of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level. This is barely higher than 1992, the first year in which the reading assessment was conducted. And keep in mind, these national averages include districts from wealthy Greenwich, Conn. to the poorest communities in the Bronx.
In some cases, those who are behind aren’t simply one grade level behind, but three or four, so the data alone doesn’t fully reflect the severity of America’s learning crisis.
To be clear, the flipside of the above test results is that some students are excelling in their assigned schools. If children are happy and thriving in their public schools, they can remain there.
But despite decades of increased education funding, many kids have a much different story and simply aren’t making progress. Those trapped in their zip code-assigned failing schools need options, particularly when their families cannot afford to move to a different school district or pay private school tuition out of pocket.
But the unions that decry school choice and would prefer these students, like Anthony, stay stuck in failing and violent schools. They think the status quo is fine—only in need of more money. They don’t want the truth exposed about their precious education bureaucracy. Namely, it fleeces taxpayers to fund its failures and then fleeces them even more when students leverage opportunities to escape. Recall that unions fear fewer things more than losing dues money. As long as money flows in increasing amounts to school districts, union coffers remain cushioned.
The solution is clear: Connect education dollars to living, breathing children. Not to bureaucracy-buoyed buildings where students don’t learn.
Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, allow funding that’s already set aside for education to follow students to the school of their choice—a school that will actually provide them with a safe environment and a quality education.
While current school choice programs offer wonderful and critical opportunities to students like Anthony Samuels, many of these programs do not allow existing education dollars to follow children. Instead, lawmakers have looked to create new pots of money in an attempt to appease unappeasable unions.
As government transparency reaches new levels, often with jarring revelations to the American public, it’s past time to pull back the curtain on one of the biggest rip-offs in American history: our failing government-run, union-controlled education system.
Every child deserves the opportunity to learn in an environment that fits his or her unique learning needs. Allowing education funding to follow children to the school of their choice is a simple solution that’s long overdue.
Anthony Samuels went on to graduate from Temple University and become an entrepreneur, thanks to school choice.
His government-assigned public school, which didn’t spend a dime on Anthony, should not have been paid for his success.
