It is often said that parents know what’s best for their children. Should parental autonomy, though, be underwritten by taxpayers, as proponents of school choice propose?
That is the fundamental question the Mississippi Legislature will face in 2026, when school choice is expected to get a major push in the session that begins in January.
Earlier this month, a collaborative of more than 20 newspapers and other news outlets in Mississippi tackled this issue, explaining what school choice might involve, how it is being received in their region of the state, and what the impact might be on their community.
Some of the reporting was inevitably speculative, as House Speaker Jason White and the other main proponents of school choice at the Capitol are still fashioning the all-encompassing legislation they plan to propose.
The bill is expected to take at least two major directions: allowing students to attend public schools other than the ones to which they are zoned; and subsidizing private school tuition either through payments to the schools directly or to the parents. The overarching idea would be to facilitate “education freedom” by allowing the state’s allocation, currently about $6,600 a year per public school student, to follow the student to wherever the student is educated, whether it be at public school, private school or home.
Both of these avenues for school choice raise serious concerns, though.
State funding only pays for a portion of the cost of educating a student. If students are allowed to attend public schools in districts where they don’t live, taxpayers in the district to which the student transfers will pick up most of the rest of the cost, a burden with which the student’s own family won’t be helping. It is easy to see how the system might be gamed. Families could live in an area with poor schools but low taxes, knowing that they have the option to send their children to better schools at no additional cost to them other than possibly transportation.
Transportation under school-choice plans is itself a conundrum. The best argument for school choice is to provide an alternative for poor children who are stuck in substandard schools. If they live far from those better schools, though, who is going to get them there if their families don’t have the means? Would public school portability only be a realistic option for middle- and upper-income families, the same families that could just as easily move into the school district they find more desirable?
As for using public funds to subsidize private school tuition, even if that passes legal muster, there is a danger that such a program would evolve into a giveaway to those who are already in private school, creating an unsustainable expense that drains resources from other government priorities, including public education.
Practical considerations aside, the argument for subsidizing the expense of private education fails ideologically. Those who are dissatisfied with the services that taxpayers provide cannot expect these same taxpayers to foot the bill for private alternatives. No one would ask the public to pay for a trip to an out-of-state amusement park instead of the local public park, or to pay for private security instead of the local police. Why is education any different?
Nevertheless, there is the problem of poor kids being condemned to a life of poor outcomes by a poor education. Mississippi’s adoption of public charter schools was supposed to provide them with an alternative, but the results so far have been unimpressive.
Maybe a broader version of school choice -- but one that is available only to low-income families -- is worth trying. Such an experiment, though, should not become the gateway to later publicly bankroll the school choices that families of means already have at their disposal.
