The Little Red Schoolhouse Could Do With a Little Competition

Choice hurts rural schools: The teachers unions promote another easily debunked myth

By Corey DeAngelis. Excerpts:

"Teachers unions and their allies are arguing that giving families choices in education would devastate their state’s rural public schools." 

"These same politicians also claim that rural constituents wouldn’t benefit from school choice because the local public school is their only option. These arguments can’t both be true. If rural families didn’t have any other options, public schools wouldn’t suffer. And if rural public schools are as great as the teachers unions say they are, they would have no need to worry about a little competition."

"As Florida has increased its scholarship programs over the past two decades, the number of private schools in the state’s rural areas has increased from 69 in 2002 to 120 in 2022. Although more than 70% of Florida students are eligible for private-school scholarships, the share of students in Florida’s rural private schools has grown by only 2.4 percentage points since 2012.

Despite a growth in private options, the mass exodus from rural public schools that many have warned about hasn’t happened. In fact, 25 of the 28 studies on the topic find that private-school choice leads to better outcomes in public schools, from increased test scores to reduced absenteeism and suspensions. Competition is a rising tide that lifts all boats."

"“Harm” inflicted on rural schools is no longer a legitimate excuse to oppose school choice. The claim certainly hasn’t prevented others from enacting innovative education initiatives. The nine most rural states, according to Census Bureau data, all have some form of private school choice. West Virginia has the second-most-expansive education-savings-account program in the nation, behind Arizona. Maine and Vermont are home to the oldest private-school voucher programs in the country—both passed in the 19th century—which were specifically designed for students in rural areas without public schools."

"giving families more options doesn’t result in a net loss of jobs; school choice simply allows families to determine where those jobs are concentrated.

According to OpenSecrets, over 90% of campaign contributions from public-school employees in deep-red rural Texas went to Democrats during the last election cycle. As education researchers Jay P. Greene and Ian Kingsbury noted, school choice merely shifts “some of the jobs from public schools dominated by Democrats to other schools whose values would be more likely to align with the those of the parents in those areas.”"