I am a retired school teacher in support of school choice and I want to tell you why. Teacher unions and school administrators with their ceaseless double-talk, I actually care about kids and outcomes.
When you see or hear someone that is a school administrator ranting about how they are opposed to education savings accounts that rescue kids from failing school districts or expansion of charter schools into more urban areas of our state, notice that their outrage is void of one thing: an argument about what is best for the kids.
Sure, they’ll tell you that their often rural, very white school districts are doing quite well. And they are. However, they will fail to notice—and perhaps they don’t even know—that most states determine how much space they will need in their prisons by looking at how well second graders today can read. For too many school districts in our state, the educational outcome for our children is prison or death. I think we can do better.
I’m not alone in knowing this. In his State of the Union Address, President Trump said that Congress must pass school choice legislation, too. In her response, Democrat Stacey Abrams said that kids should have a great education, regardless of what zip code they live in. Now, that had to ruffle some feathers of school administrators. (Side note: you know that there’s nearly four school administrators for every teacher in this state?)
Speaking of school administrators, while they’re busy opposing legislation on scholarships and charter schools, you’ll note they rarely support any type of reforms. We often refer to them as the “lobby of no” in Jefferson City. You would think that in their line of work that they would be able to think of some reforms that would help children in foster care, struggling with testing requirements, etc. Instead, they live in fear that someone will move their cheese.
For my colleagues that have for far too long represented the interest of the dozen or so school superintendents in their district instead of the thousands of teachers and parents, please hear me out: A school superintendent cannot stand between you and your re-election and even if they did, is it really worth not doing what’s right for the state’s kids. Spoiler alert: No state representative has ever lost a re-election because they supported school choice.
This is the year to pass legislation to bring more school choice to Missouri. Please, let’s move forward for our kids, regardless of what part of the state they live in.
