Callen: Poll shows Mississippians want school choice

Over the past four years, our state Legislature has adopted a handful of key reforms designed to strengthen our education system by providing students with new education options and taxpayers with more accountability and transparency. This includes the Equal Opportunity for Students with Special Needs Act, the Charter School Act, the Literacy-Based Promotion Act and A-F grading for all schools and school districts.

Each of these bills were met with intense opposition from the education establishment as  it fought bitterly to preserve  its monopoly status and to evade accountability for  its performance. We heard warnings that legislators who supported these measures would be sent into early retirement. The public doesn’t want school choice, they said. Education policy debates have been some of the most contentious and difficult debates of any policy issue. One long-serving Jackson legislator even likened school choice programs to puppy mills for children.

Then Election Day came.

In November, Mississippians not only re-elected 98 percent of the legislators who took these often difficult votes, they actually grew the education reform majority.

So why was there no electoral Armageddon at the ballot box? Because Mississippians, white and black, Democrat and Republican, overwhelmingly support school choice.

New polling from OnMessage Inc., a highly respected national polling firm, conducted after the November elections, shows 78 percent of Mississippians support giving “parents the right to use the tax dollars associated with their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school that best serves their needs.” This includes 83 percent of Republicans, 73 percent of Democrats, 81 percent of white voters and 73 percent of African-Americans. And for those most likely to have school-age children, 55 and younger, 81 percent support school choice.

For something supposedly so controversial, the unity across age, race and political party tells a different story. In fact, it’s hard to imagine any political issue with such broad support.

It is clear, based on election results and survey data, that Mississippians want school choice. Perhaps that is because school choice is not a novel idea. Mississippians exercise school choice every day. If you have ever chosen to live in a certain neighborhood because of the quality of the local schools, you have exercised school choice. If you have ever saved to send your child to private school, you have exercised school choice.

There is a segment of Mississippians that already has school choice because  it has financial resources, and with resources come options. However, for Mississippians without those financial resources, these avenues of choice are usually out of reach. For most of the 115,000 Mississippi families with students in failing public schools, moving to a neighborhood with better schools is out of the question. For families struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table, affording private school tuition is, in most cases, impossible. Without options, most of these families settle for a subpar education for their children, knowing their kids deserve better. Countless Mississippi parents lay their heads down at night knowing their children are not being prepared for life in the schools they attend. They are forced to watch their kids stumble, with many destined to drop out of school, struggle to find work, and end up in prison.

In America, with so many opportunities available, why is there still such a sharp contrast between the options available to the haves and the have-nots? How can we extend school choice to students who don’t already have it?

Last year, Nevada took a bold step toward righting this wrong by enacting the first-in-the-nation universal Education Scholarship Account program. If a Nevada student is assigned to a public school that isn’t meeting his or her needs, the parent can apply for an ESA and a percentage of what the state would have spent on that child’s education is deposited into an account for that child. The funds can then be spent by the child’s parents on private school tuition, tutoring, or other education-related expenses. This transformational program is changing lives by giving Nevada families the financial resources to shop around for the best educational setting for their children.

Just imagine how many unique, student-centered educational settings would develop if Mississippi dedicated itself to funding students and their needs rather than funding a system and forcing students to fit into that mold. Advancements in brain science have taught us that every child learns differently. Yet our public education system largely teaches and tests every student the same way, as if we were producing widgets in a factory rather than shaping young lives and encouraging individual creativity. Education should be delivered in a manner that responds to the individual learning needs of students. Schools should be as unique as the students and communities they serve.

Choice is not an attack on public schools and has never been about privatizing education; it is about creating a vibrant marketplace of high quality education options — public, private and charter — and empowering parents to choose the best setting for their child. In fact, cities and states with strong school choice programs have seen significant achievement gains in their public schools as increased student options encourages them to be more competitive. At the heart of school choice is a focus on serving individual student needs.
The Equal Opportunity for Students with Special Needs Act, created by the Legislature last year, is a significant step in the right direction toward giving students new education options. Like Nevada, this program gives parents the opportunity to create an Education Scholarship Account. When Martha Beard of Pelahatchie received an ESA, which allows her daughter Lanna to attend New Summit School in Jackson, she called it “a godsend.” But unlike Nevada, this program is limited to students with special needs. School choice should be available to all children. Students need it, the public supports it, now it’s up to our legislators to act.

Grant Callen is president of Empower Mississippi, an education reform organization focused on providing all Mississippi children with access to a high-quality education.