School Choice Group Calls For Education To Take Center Stage At Presidential Debates

Although the coalition is attempting to reframe school choice as a net benefit for Black parents and students, according to the Washington Post, the school choice movement in general was developed as a way to protect the segregation present in the education system

School choice has been touted by some as a way for Black families to have more autonomy over their children’s education, and some advocates want the education of Black children to be a focus of the presidential debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to a press release from The Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools (FCCS), Black children specifically need to have their educational needs discussed at the debate.

Sarah Carpenter, the Founder and CEO of Powerful Parent Movement, called for attention to be paid to the education of Black children. “We need to focus on the needs of Black children,” Carpenter said. “Saving democracy is a vital issue, as well as addressing the border, but America cannot be a world leader in the future if our children are not getting a high-quality education.”

In 2019, Carpenter and the Memphis-based Powerful Parent Movement joined with Black educators and activists to form the FCCS in order to advocate for parent choice and the needs of Black children.

Although the coalition is attempting to reframe school choice as a net benefit for Black parents and students, according to the Washington Post, the school choice movement, in general, was developed as a way to protect the segregation present in the education system and to bring about the abolition of public schools, neither of which help Black children.

According to Nancy McLean, the William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, even though school choice has captured the attention of some Black and other families of color, it will not lead to the kind of educational freedoms that the rhetoric implies.

“Indeed, in a sad irony, decades after helping to impede Brown’s implementation, school choice advocates on the right targeted families of color for what one libertarian legal strategist called ‘forging nontraditional alliances.’ They won over some parents of color, who came to see vouchers and charter schools as a way to escape the racial and class inequalities that stemmed from White flight out of urban centers and the Supreme Court’s willingness to allow White Americans to avoid integrating schools,” McLean wrote in 2021.

McLean continued, “But the history behind vouchers reveals that the rhetoric of ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ stands in stark contrast to the real goals sought by conservative and libertarian advocates. The system they dream of would produce staggering inequalities, far more severe than the disparities that already exist today.”

The Republican Party platform, according to The Associated Press, along with calling for an end to the Department of Education, also calls for “universal school choice,” which some opponents have taken as coded language for defunding public education. According to their platform, “Republicans believe families should be empowered to choose the best Education for their children.”

Kim Anderson, the executive director of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, told the AP that the Republican plan for school choice would “throw chaos into the lives of American families.”

Anderson continued, “Public education has been a common good in this country since its inception, and to eliminate public education puts our democracy and our economy and the fabric of a diverse, inclusive society at risk.”

Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, went even further, denigrating the entire Republican Party platform on education due to her belief that the party seems afraid of diversity and inclusion.

Weingarten said the platform creates “a defunding mechanism and a mechanism to give a tax break to the wealthy,” Before continuing, “My question to them is, what are they afraid of?” she told the outlet. “Why are they afraid of critical thinking? Why are they afraid of freedom to learn and freedom to teach? Why are they afraid of honest history? Why are they afraid of diversity?”