Huckabee's position on school choice appears to be the latest hot issue in the debate over whether Huckabee is "conservative" on anything other than moral issues. The anti-Huckabee right has taken to claiming that he "opposes school choice." Yet Huckabee has strong backing from homeschoolers and frequently says he strongly supports a parent's right to choose their child's education. So which is it?
Before I go any farther, a personal interest disclaimer: school choice is the main issue that first got me interested in politics. I am the product of 16 years of Christian education, and I have never been enrolled in a school financed by taxpayers. My parents sacrificed a lot to give us a faith-based education, even while living in a town with extraordinarily high property taxes to finance best-in-state, gold-plated local public schools. So naturally, they complained about paying twice for education, and I started following the school choice issue before I even entered high school. An essay I wrote in college on school choice landed me my first real job, and I've continued to be active on the issue ever since. So this means a lot to me.
On the other hand, my husband is the product of 20+ years of public education, and he feels it served him quite well, while enabling his parents to still retire early even while none of their four children who all have graduate degrees have ever incurred student loans. Today he is a public school teacher, though his main motivation for teaching in public school is that it pays nearly twice as much as private school would. But he's not a member of any teacher's union, and his experience teaching in the brave new world of "Standards of Learning"-focused education (i.e. the focus of teaching is now on getting the maximum number of students to pass a standardized test) has convinced him that's not what he wants for our children.
Clearly, public education serves some people very well, like my husband and his siblings. But it leaves a lot of families in the cold: residents of bad school districts, average students (nowadays) who slide by because they'll pass the test but there aren't any resources dedicated to challenging them to achieve their true potential, and families who believe that faith should be an integral part of the education experience... and numerous other categories.
So what's the solution? "School choice" is the obvious answer, which generically means allowing families to enroll their children in the school of their choice (or homeschooling) with some form of financial assistance to do so. But not all school choice programs are created equal.
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