SUMMARY
Conventional wisdom holds that the culture war is bad for school choice advocates. But, as a nationally representative survey shows, it could be extremely helpful for promoting education scholarship accounts, tax credit scholarships, and school vouchers. Whether education reform organizations embrace cultural debates or not, the culture war is here to stay. School choice advocates are armed with an obvious solution. They should not squander the opportunity to use it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
For too long, education reformers have avoided promoting school choice to help parents frustrated with critical race theory or gender ideology in the classroom.
But new Heritage data shows that many Americans not only oppose the woke agenda in schools, but they are also the same people more likely to support school choice.
The school choice movement can gain significantly more supporters by wading into the current cultural battles to promote school choice as a solution.
Critical race theory (CRT) and the high-profile projects pushing the radical ideology’s discriminatory ideas, such as The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, are trying to divide Americans by skin color and pit them against each other.1
The cultural fissures are manifesting in education, with heated arguments about curricula and classroom activism. Some observers expected that tensions would subside with the election of President Joe Biden, but debates—about CRT, restrictive coronavirus measures, and the general culture—appear more heated with each passing month. Prolonged school closures,2
mask mandates,3pornographic books in school libraries,4the FBI designating parents as “domestic terrorists,”5 and racial essentialism for third graders6 have elevated education policy to the forefront of America’s culture war.
Rather than seeing these cultural divides as an opportunity to highlight a problem that expanded school choice might help to solve, education reform organizations have responded by either endorsing social justice ideology or ignoring the controversies. Many foundations are comfortable declaring that “Black Lives Matter” and drafting canned press releases about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).8 Very few education reform advocacy groups have been willing to emphasize the ever-increasing cultural division in public schools as part of a strategy for advancing school choice.
The inclination of the education reform movement to embrace woke perspectives, or simply to avoid cultural controversy, is counterproductive. In a separate paper, we argued that recent school choice gains will stall—or unravel—if the movement commits to policy designs that alienate politicians who traditionally vote for school choice bills.9
The Republican Party provides an overwhelming majority of legislative support for private school choice, and votes from Democrats are inconsequential to the passage of most choice programs. Accordingly, crafting bills to court elected Democrats—the long-standing strategy adopted by leading education reform foundations and nonprofits—has been ineffective.
The school choice movement should adopt new tactics not only on policy design but also with respect to messaging. On policy, this means developing universal programs with large scholarship amounts and few regulatory constraints. On messaging, this means promoting choice to parents who are concerned about political activism and other so-called social justice trends in neighborhood schools.
It is time for the school choice movement to embrace the culture war. Education reform organizations have traditionally preferred to stay above the cultural fray, which is partly driven by the fear that engaging in cultural debates would inflame tensions and make school choice seem less appealing to potential allies.
Such concerns are overblown. To the contrary, school choice offers a sensible resolution to cultural debates. School choice gives parents what they want, regardless of which side they are on—more control over their children’s education. And, it acknowledges that parents have pluralistic views about which values to instill in their children. Of course, nearly all parents tend to share some essential beliefs—for example, that schools should teach the “success sequence.”10
Advocacy groups would be foolish not to promote choice as a solution that can connect large majorities of parents with schools that align with their values—especially when public schools are not meeting their needs.
Moreover, it is hard to imagine how espousing a positive vision of education freedom can be decoupled from cultural issues. The culture wars are not going away. The forces driving these conflicts will continue even if education reform organizations continue to put their heads in the sand and pretend those issues do not exist. Rather than embracing the woke agenda or ignoring the subject, the best arrow in their quiver is one they have so far been unwilling to deploy: a ready-made policy solution that can bring peace to cultural conflicts, namely, parent choice in education, school choice.
Overview
This Backgrounder estimates how engaging in cultural issues facing this country could produce important gains for school choice advocates. It analyzes results of a nationally representative survey that asks a variety of questions about both cultural issues and school choice. Overall, respondents are supportive of school choice and strongly oppose social justice ideology. These findings are consistent with other surveys.11
Moreover, respondents who are skeptical about the woke agenda tend to be most supportive of school choice.
Notably, a meaningful percentage of respondents indicate that they are “not sure” about controversial cultural issues, such as whether CRT should be used to train teachers, whether the 1619 Project should be taught in traditional public schools, and whether America is the best country for racial minorities to thrive.
Part of the reason why some respondents are undecided about CRT and the 1619 Project is because foundations and nonprofits have made a conscious decision to ignore these issues. A better approach for education reform groups would be to provide information about these debates, emphasizing the fact that CRT is trying to divide parents and that school choice is a solution. Respondents who have not made up their minds about cultural debates are an important constituency and potential school choice allies. If the education reform movement could make them more aware of cultural controversies so that they understand the nature of the problem, they would almost certainly be more open to school choice as an attractive solution.