School Choice
There is a quiet irony in watching Mississippi's leaders champion "educational freedom" while working up plans that could systematically starve the very schools that educate 85% of our children.
For 16 consecutive years, the legislature underfunded public education. And now, after just two years of adequate funding under a new formula, these same lawmakers want to siphon taxpayer dollars into private institutions that answer to no one, accept whom they please, and operate behind closed doors.
They call it school choice. A better name might be public abandonment.
The architects of this speak in lofty terms about opportunity and competition, as if education were a marketplace commodity rather than a constitutional obligation. House Speaker Jason White promises that "when families can direct their children's education, we see positive outcomes." But he conveniently omits whom those outcomes may best serve.
Not the child with special needs whom private schools can legally reject. Not the rural family without transportation to the nearest private academy 30 miles away. Not the community watching its neighborhood school possibly slowly bleed out as vouchers drain away students and dollars.
This is not about expanding opportunity. It is about shifting public responsibility to private interests while calling it freedom.
Consider the arithmetic that our rural superintendents understand all too well. When students leave for private schools, the per-pupil funding follows them. But the school building remains. The buses still run their routes. The special education teacher stays on staff. The fixed costs don't disappear — they simply crush what's left.
This could force school closures and consolidation. These are not hypothetical fears. They are the documented realities in states that have walked this path before us such as Arkansas. Private schools will aim for your tax dollars without your accountability again Arkansas program is an example of this.
Public schools must accept every child — the troubled, the disabled, the poor, the brilliant, the average. They must test, report, and answer to elected school boards and state accountability measures. Private schools operate under no such constraints. They can reject applicants, avoid standardized testing, and will spend taxpayer money with minimal oversight.
That is not school choice. That is a separate and unequal system funded by public dollars.
Mississippi has been touting the Mississippi Miracle as we have moved up from the bottom of the country’s reading educational scale to top tier readers. It was not politicians who got this Miracle going but teachers in the public schools.
Some public schools are indeed failing their students. But the solution to a broken public school is not to abandon it for a private one — it is to fix what is broken.
We know how to improve schools: hiring quality teachers, adequate funding helps, early childhood education, updated facilities, and communities that support their schools rather than flee them. Mississippi finally implemented full funding just two years ago. We barely gave it time to work before rushing toward throwing money at what could be a destructive idea.
Some families may feel like they genuinely need alternatives to failing schools. But vouchers won't help the families who need them most. The rural poor without transportation. The special needs child whom private schools can reject. The family for whom a $6,000 voucher still leaves thousands in tuition out of reach. Vouchers serve the families already in private schools, not those trapped in failing ones.
If Mississippi's leaders truly cared about educational freedom, they would strengthen public schools, so every family has a good option close to home. They would fund special education fully. They would pay teachers competitively. They would invest in rural schools rather than watching them struggle.
Instead, they offer a mirage of choice while engineering the collapse of public education. The same legislators who couldn't find money to adequately fund public schools for 16 years suddenly discovered hundreds of millions for private school vouchers.
Our children deserve better than a false choice between a gutted public system and a private one accountable to no one.
Editor’s note: Joseph McCain is the publisher of Choctaw Plaindealer and Webster Progress times. He has worked in the newspaper industry for over 30 years and may be reached at 662-803-5236 or email reporter@choctawplaindealer.com.
