About School Choice

To the Editor:

Fayette County children of every race/color, income or faith should have the freedom to learn and pursue their dreams in a great public school, regardless of ability, where they live, or what they look like.

But so-called School Choice is but a deceptive maneuver, a plan for hiding true intentions of a slippery slope. If the Texas legislature has its way, the slippery slope would be made dramatically more slippery and steeper.

First, “choice” is not about choice as some governing principle. Don’t be fooled. Many of those who believe in school choice favor an authoritarian Daddy State that dictates to women that you shall have that baby or die trying. No choice there. Choice is not a governing principle by those on the political right.

School Choice is nothing but a ruse, a patina of respectability, for the redistribution of two public resources. It is a redistribution of wealth (taxes) from Texas’ taxpayers to the already wealthy in the form of vouchers. It is a redistribution of educational content from unfettered learning to ideological content—political as well as religious, or a noxious blending of the two.

Most seriously, ideologically based learning, with its love of curriculum review and even book banning, kills reason and critical thinking. We are already witnessing that in Florida where such ideologically based learning is beginning to suffocate reason and critical thinking, making Florida the state where freedom to learn goes to die. Could Texas be next?

Senator Kolkhorst and Representative Kitzman, please don’t allow Texas to be next in the dissolution of public education and the demise of reason, critical thinking, and unfettered learning.

Together we must demand an end to the practice of giving public resources to private schools, so nothing stands in the way of us providing every child in Texas a fully funded quality education in their neighborhood and us making school choice moot.