Advances in Wyoming and Alabama show a turning of the tide.
By Corey DeAngelis March 11, 2024 WSJ.com
The Wyoming Senate passed a broad school-choice bill Thursday by a vote of 28-3. The bill would establish Wyoming’s first education savings account program, allowing families with preschool- to high-school-age children earning up to five times the federal poverty level—$156,000 for a family of four—to take their children’s state-funded education dollars to the public, private, charter or home-based providers of their choosing. The grant would start at $6,000 for children in the lowest income category and decline with rising family income.
The bill already passed the House 34-27, so it now heads to Gov. Mark Gordon for his signature. (The Republican majority is 29-2 in the Senate and 57-5 in the House, so the lopsided Senate vote came closer to falling along party lines.)
Also Thursday, Mr. Gordon vetoed a bill that would have allowed charter schools to apply for grants without going through their local school boards, which are controlled by their competitors. Mr. Gordon cited constitutional concerns and his belief that the change might not be “fiscally responsible.” An override vote narrowly failed in the House.
In his veto message, Mr. Gordon also said, “I enthusiastically support school choice” and that he is “committed to collaborating with the Legislature” on it. He can keep that promise by signing the bill for education savings accounts.
Whether or not he does, it’s striking that the legislature in one of the most rural states in America passed a robust school choice bill. Rural red-state Republicans, backed by teachers unions, have long opposed school choice. They say their constituents don’t want it because there aren’t many private schools in their districts.
Yet the nine most rural states in the country (as measured by population share) now have some form of private school choice. Maine and Vermont have the oldest private-school voucher programs in the U.S., both enacted in the late 19th century for students who live in rural districts without public schools. Both programs allow state funding to follow the child to the public or private school his family chooses.
In 2021 West Virginia became the first state to make school choice available to all families, regardless of income. And in Alabama last Thursday, Gov. Kay Ivey signed a universal school choice bill into law. That is notable because the state teachers union, the Alabama Education Association, has contributed more than $3 million to Republican legislative campaigns since 2018. A report by the Alabama Policy Institute last year found the union “was the single largest contributor to Republicans in the last election cycle.”
In Texas my organization’s super PAC, the American Federation for Children Victory Fund, targeted 13 antichoice Republican incumbents for defeat in last week’s primaries. Ten either lost outright or were forced into runoffs. Rural Republican resistance to school choice is crumbling. Now if only Democrats would get on board.
Mr. DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.