"Education Without Limits: Exploring the Benefits of School Choice"
House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education
2025-03-11
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Source: Congress.gov
Summary
This hearing explores the role of school choice in improving education outcomes, focusing on charter schools, education savings accounts, and private school vouchers. The panel presents evidence showing that students in school choice programs perform better academically and have higher graduation rates, with success stories from New York and Arizona. The discussion highlights concerns about inequity, segregation, and civil rights violations in voucher programs, emphasizing that private schools often lack accountability and do not serve students with disabilities. Witnesses argue that public education remains the foundation of democracy and that federal funding must prioritize public schools over vouchers. The hearing concludes with a call to fully fund public schools and strengthen the education system rather than privatizing it, especially to address long-standing disparities in access and outcomes for low-income and marginalized students.
Participants
Transcript
the subcommittee on early childhood elementary and secondary education will come to order I note that a quorum is present without objection the chair is authorized to call recess at any time Education outcomes in the United States continue to plummet. The recently released nation's report card paints an alarming picture. Math and reading scores continue to decline despite a steady increase in overall spending. As a result, millions of young people are being deprived of the skills needed for success in college, careers, and life. This is also a long-term risk to our nation's prosperity and security. We are at risk of losing our edge to countries that are doing a better job educating the next generation. Yet amidst this troubling landscape, there are positive outliers. Across the nation, there are many outstanding schools of all kinds with dedicated teachers and administrators that are defying the odds and getting tremendous results for their students. In particular, states and communities that have embraced school choice in all of its forms are defying the national trend. These success stories provide a starting point for the education reform that America needs. Indeed, America's education landscape is increasingly a tale of two models. On one hand, some states have used every lever of policy to limit the options available to families. These jurisdictions share certain perverse features. Students are assigned to a neighborhood school with few, if any, alternatives. Instruction is driven by top-down bureaucratic requirements with little regard for learning outcomes.
Educators are given lifetime job security at denied meaningful professional development. The same things are done year after year, impervious to changes in the world, technology, or the science of learning, with parents kept at arm's length through it all. This is the model behind American educational decline. It is the model that the Biden administration did everything possible to reinforce. Fortunately, a second model has gained significant traction in recent years. and it flips every aspect of this failed model on its head. Parents select a school that is right for their child. Educators receive the support they need and are expected to perform. Schools that fail to get results, lose students and eventually may cease to exist. Those that succeed attract more students and continue to innovate and grow with parents in the driver's seat through and through. This is the school choice model, which President Trump's first education executive orders aim to reinforce. There are now 81 private school choice programs across 33 states, serving 1.2 million students, which is about double the number of students served just three years ago. The percentage of school-age students homeschooling has roughly doubled since 2019. There are also a variety of school choice programs within traditional public school systems, such as those that allow open enrollment within a district or transfers across districts or offer choices like magnet schools or career education focused schools. But the form of school choice that I believe shows perhaps the greatest promise in elevating student achievement and closing achievement gaps at scale is charter schools. Since 2005, the number of charter schools has doubled and charter enrollment has tripled to over 3.7 million students. Unlike traditional public schools to which students get assigned based on their neighborhood, charters are schools of choice that families elect to attend.
Such schools are publicly funded, but they only receive that funding if they attract families to opt in, and they're held accountable for student learning outcomes. In exchange, charters are generally freed from top-down bureaucratic requirements and can operate with greater flexibility and autonomy, allowing them to innovate in line with their own educational vision. This model has proven enormously successful. A 2023 Stanford Credo study found that charter students gained an additional six days of learning in math and six teen days in reading per year compared to their district school peers. These gains are especially significant for historically underserved communities. Take two powerful examples. The Success Academy Charter Network has over 50 schools in New York City serving mostly low-income minority students. Success Academy has ranked number one in the entire state of New York in math scores. And the KIPP Charter Network, which stands for Knowledge is Power Program, has over 240 schools nationwide focused on underserved communities. A 2023 Mathematica study found KIPP students were twice as likely to complete college as their peers. The opposition to charters by the Biden administration and political leaders in states like California is also revealing. After all, these are public schools that are open to all tuition-free. Yet they have become the target of funding cuts, enrollment caps, authorizing obstacles, and harassing regulations. From Gavin Newsom to Bill de Blasio to Joe Biden, a certain faction of the Democrat Party has been bent on closing public charter schools and stopping new ones from opening. This proves beyond doubt that opposition to school choice is not about protecting the public school system.
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