School Choice: Beyond Left and Right
The debate around school choice and education freedom often focuses on politics. But the evidence tells a different story. States with the strongest school choice laws include both conservative Florida and Arizona, and progressive-leaning Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Likewise, some of the weakest performers are reliably red. The lesson is clear: when it comes to giving families more options, political labels don’t tell the whole story.
Families, educators, students, and communities nationwide are currently participating in National School Choice Week, a time to recognize and celebrate the growing empowerment of parents to make informed educational decisions in partnership with and for their children.
The Center for Education Reform’s Parent Power! Index, which evaluates states annually on how well they empower families, confirms this. States at the top and bottom of the rankings cut across partisan lines, demonstrating that school choice is driven by opportunity, not ideology.
The data bears this out again and again. According to EdChoice and the Morning Consult, “school choice policies, especially ESAs, continue to enjoy strong levels of support as we enter into the 2025-26 school year. At least two-thirds of parents support charter schools (67%), vouchers (70%), ESAs (74%), and open enrollment (77%). These policies also enjoy majority support from the general population, though support levels are typically lower when compared to the support from school parents. Even the latest PDK/Gallup poll of Americans’ attitudes towards education, using a question that contains well-documented bias, found “59% of parents supported using public funding so that their child could attend a private or religious school”.
I travel the country each year meeting with education leaders, innovators, and policymakers. From what I see firsthand, those who embrace school choice come from every background imaginable – recent immigrants and Mayflower families; Democrats, Republicans, progressives, and libertarians; teachers, entrepreneurs, and, above all, parents. Even in today’s climate of division, the common thread is a relentless drive to see children succeed in school and in life. That passion fuels innovation, transforming old schools and creating entirely new models of learning.
Innovative school models like the Chesterton Academy Network based in Florida, which empowers parents to create joyful, high-quality schools where students are known, challenged, and transformed and Path of Life Learning based in Virginia, whose mission is to remove the education interruption experienced by so many military families, prove that when education is built around the needs of students and families, children thrive.
The COVID-19 pandemic made our education reality impossible to ignore. School closures, chaotic remote learning, and top-down decisions exposed the rigidity of the system. Parents saw firsthand what wasn’t working, and they acted, launching microschools, building inclusive homeschool co-ops, and demanding better access to schools that meet their children’s needs.
Meanwhile, states and districts are spending upwards of $20,000 per student each year, with results that fail our children and leave America lagging globally. The Nation’s Report Card makes it plain: most U.S. students can’t read or do math at grade level. Parents know excuses won’t fix that.
And they’re right.
The Parent Power! Index makes clear which states are truly putting parents in charge – measuring policies not just on paper, but on their effectiveness in creating opportunity and innovation. It is a roadmap showing that real reform comes when parents are given the authority and tools to choose the best education for their children.
Education choice is not ideology. It is the commitment to give every family the broadest possible range of options – so no zip code, income level, or learning challenge determines a child’s future.
Parent power doesn’t end when the school day starts. It begins when states respect parents as decision-makers and provide them with the information, authority, and resources to guide their child’s education. That’s when opportunity expands. That’s when schools improve. And that’s when every child has a real chance to succeed.
