School choice is as relevant now as it was in the 1990s

From The Archives: My 1996 Op-Ed On School Choice

I wrote the below op-ed during the Clinton era debates about the growing threat of the NEA taking classroom decisions out of local control and sending them to Washington bureaucrats, union leaders, and lobbyists.

While this piece is aspirational, not advocating an outright ban of public schools, I think my concerns have been proven valid by the rapid rise of Critical Race Theory and transgender propaganda in the classroom. Neither of those would have ever happened if parents had school choice all along.

My family opted to homeschool most of our kids, but a reasonable case can be made for society to pool its funds and talents to provide an education. The Little House on the Prarie schoolhouse model wasn’t all bad. I also have family who are deeply involved in and committed to the public school system. But I think we can all agree that as local control has been supplanted by administrators and moneyed interests far away from the classroom, a bit of a monster has been created. That’s what …