Back in 2013, I asked readers to vote for their favorite political cartoonist.
The third-place winner was the unknown person who put together a Wizard-of-Id parody that cleverly illustrated how redistribution programs undermine the work ethic.
If I did a new version of that contest, I would include another anonymous entry. This cartoon, which I shared when writing about anti-school choice Republican state legislators in Iowa getting rejected by voters, is one of my all-time favorites. Especially since Iowa now has statewide school choice! I’m recycling this cartoon because Texas voters just sent the same message, rejecting Republicans who sided with teacher unions over parents. Haley Strack has a column in National Review about yesterday’s results.
Texas governor Greg Abbott now has enough votes in the state house to advance his ambitious school-choice agenda, after six Republican incumbents who were vocally opposed to school vouchers lost their primary runoff elections on Tuesday.
…The governor’s electoral crusade for school choice came to a head this week, as eleven out of the 15 Republican challengers Abbott backed this cycle defeated House incumbents in their primaries. Abbott also worked to boot seven anti-voucher Republicans off the ballot in the state’s March Republican primaries. Voucher bills have failed in Texas, most notably, last year, when 21 House Republicans voted against expanding school choice as part of an education-funding bill. …
Abbott spent an unprecedented $8 million of his own campaign funds to support pro-voucher candidates. …AFC Victory Fund’s CEO Tommy Schultz said in a statement. “[Incumbents] Justin Holland, John Kuempel, and DeWayne Burns lost the moment they chose loyalty to unions and a corrupt establishment over students.”
For those keeping score, here are some results.
Looks like the school choice revolution is still going strong.
So even though policy is moving in the wrong direction in Washington, at least some states are doing (or are about to do) some good things.
Great News on School Choice, Part II
May 30, 2024 by Dan Mitchell
Yesterday’s column celebrated election results in Texas, where voters ejected several Republican state lawmakers who opposed school choice.
This presumably means that Texas next year will add its name to the list of states that give parents the right to pick the best school for their children.
Today’s column is going to share good news about Florida, which significantly expanded its school choice system last year.
The results are so spectacular that even establishment media outlets can’t help but notice. Here are some excerpts from a remarkable report in Politico by Andrew Atterbury.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have spent years aggressively turning the state into a haven for school choice. They have been wildly successful, with tens of thousands more children enrolling in private or charter schools or homeschooling. Now as those programs balloon, some of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools. …
DeSantis said Thursday evening at the Florida Homeschool Convention in Kissimmee. “Florida has shown a blueprint, and we really can be an engine for that as other states work to adopt a lot of the policies that we’ve done.” …How traditional public schools handled the pandemic, as well as disagreements over curriculum and subject matter, have…contributed to parents leaving, according to school choice advocates. “If your product is better, you’ll be fine. The problem is, they are a relic of the past — a monopolized system where you have one option,” Chris Moya, a Florida lobbyist representing charter schools and the state’s top voucher administering organization, said of traditional public schools. “And when parents have options, they vote with their feet.” …
Private school enrollment across Florida rose by 47,000 students to 445,000 students from 2019-20 to 2022-23… A growing number of families also chose to homeschool their children during this span, as this population grew by nearly 50,000 students between 2019-20 and 2022-23, totaling 154,000 students.
At the risk of understatement, Politico is not a conservative publication like National Review or a libertarian outlet like Reason. I’m guessing the folks who work at Politico lean to the left, like the vast majority of journalists. Yet it publishes an article with a headline about Florida’s “wildly successful” system of school choice.
The bottom line is that Florida’s success isn’t a surprise to people who follow the research on school choice. But it is a surprise to see the establishment media acknowledging this to be the case.
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