Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates and Illinois Education Association official Sean Denney send their kids to private schools while devoting their time to fighting against poorer parents’ rights to send their children to similar schools.
“School choice” is the principle that families, not the government, should decide where their children go to school. It encompasses a wide range of options, from providing parents vouchers for private and charter school tuition to accessing “education savings accounts” for tuition, education materials, and special needs testing.
In practice, school choice allows parents to direct the education tax dollars already spent on their children instead of requiring the money to be spent at an assigned public school based on the parents’ ZIP code.
Advocates for school choice suggest that the primary benefits of “funding students [directly], not systems” include fostering competition among schools, improving academic performance, and providing access to quality education for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
Progressives often lambast the practice—suggesting that allowing parents to choose which schools their children and money go to will drain and destroy public schools.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency in May after the state Legislature passed additional measures to expand school choice in North Carolina.
Other elected Democrats who sent their children to private schools while speaking out against school choice include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. A host of state legislators also do so.
Why go to the trouble of fighting so desperately against school choice if you’re sending your children to school choice options anyway?
Recent polls indicate overwhelming support for additional school choice options among all major political parties and demographics.
The poll also found that 72 percent of white voters, 70 percent of black voters, 66 percent of Asian voters, and 77 percent of Hispanic voters said they support school choice.
In Chicago, Ms. Gates went so far as to call private schools “fascist,” although the teachers union president has no problem sending her kids to one.
Broader union positions over the past few decades claimed simultaneously that school choice options would result in the abandonment and closing of public schools while asking state and federal legislators to drastically increase funding for declining public schools.
Anti-choice activists openly argue that if parents want to send their children to private, charter, or microschools, they should pay the additional cost—therefore funding both the local public school and the school that parents want to send their children to.
I don’t have an issue with teachers union officials and Democrat politicians sending their children to private schools. Parents should have the right to send their children to a school that best suits the values and needs of that family.
The problem rests in the hypocrisy of the situation. Few things come across worse than the Marie Antoinette look.
Forcing families to funnel their money into failing public schools while your children go to better schools of your choice fosters resentment. If you really believe that public schools are the best option to the point of advocating against other options, your children had better be attending those public schools.
