This is the dawning of the age of school choice. The school bells will start ringing in the days and weeks ahead, but a record number of kids — especially children from low-income families — will be opting out of the traditional public schools. This year as many as 1 million kids will participate in public school alternatives, including voucher programs, tuition tax credits, scholarship programs or charter schools.

That’s a good thing, right? After all, to paraphrase the famous axiom: When schools compete, kids win. But that’s not the way the teachers unions and the education aristocracy see it. The New York Times notes that education freedom is causing a “crisis in the public schools.”

Why? Because so many families are opting for better school alternatives. Isn’t this mass exodus from the public schools and the reign of the teacher unions prima facie evidence that they are failing their communities and the kids? A new study by the Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania finds that almost four of 10 public schools have a problem with violence, bullying, guns on the premises and other infractions. How can kids learn if they don’t feel safe? This is a form of public-education child abuse.

That hasn’t stopped the trillion-dollar education empire from striking back at school choice programs. The Washington Post recently published a front-page hit piece last week on the highly touted Arizona choice program with as many as 300,000 kids participating. It’s become a model for the nation.

The Post complains because so many kids are switching to private alternative schools, many of the failing public schools in Phoenix will have to shut down. One school highlighted for closing its doors is Roosevelt Elementary. “It’s a grieving process for me,” Antionette Nuanez, the school’s librarian told the Post. “It’s like a death.”

Not to the parents whose kids have gained access to better schools. They’re feeling liberated. It’s a head-scratcher why empowering low-income families with access to superior private schools is regarded as a bad thing. This would be like complaining that a popular Whole Foods grocery store has moved into town and now the crappy grocery store down the street has to go out of business.

To its credit the Times acknowledges that vouchers and other choice programs are forcing the public schools to clean up their act, serve the families in the community and compete head-to-head for students. That’s the whole point. Raise the standards everywhere to end the curse of declining national test scores.

Buried deep in the Post story trash-talking vouchers is an admission that “just 13 percent of students (in the Roosevelt Elementary District) ranked proficient or better in math in 2023-24.” Amazingly, “more than half the schools are rated ‘A’ or ‘B’ by the state.” I don’t know what’s worse: that there are schools where only about one of every seven kids can do basic math, or that these schools still get an “A” or “B” grade.

Talk about grade inflation!

Would you send your kids to a school where only one in seven students is learning basic math? I wouldn’t. No one should have to.

Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and the cofounder of Unleash Prosperity, which advocates for education freedom for all children.

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