As someone who served on the original planning board for National School Choice Week, which began in 2010, I am thrilled that the movement is thriving. The latest numbers show that 34 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico now have at least one private school choice program. Of those, 19 states have at least one program that is universally accessible to K-12 students or is on track to become so. Twenty states have tax-credit scholarships, 18 have educational savings accounts, and 10 states and D.C. have vouchers. In all, there are 75 programs on the books nationwide.
Though frequently tarred by some on the left as a right-wing movement started by and mainly for the rich, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, school choice’s roots were bipartisan. In 1990, during the Pleistocene Era of educational reform, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program became the country’s first publicly funded school-choice program for low-income children. Born of an interesting political duo—Democratic state legislator Polly Williams and Republican Governor Tommy Thompson—the program was launched to address the city’s troubled education system.
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