Donald Trump wants school choice. The GOP adopted school choice as part of their 2024 platform. Most important of all, parents in Mississippi overwhelmingly support school choice.
So why do some Mississippi ‘conservatives’ oppose school choice?
Republicans have held the Governor’s mansion in this state since 2004. They have held the Senate since 2011 and the House since 2012. In all that time they have made remarkably little progress towards giving families control over their child’s share of education tax dollars. Why?
Firstly, too many lawmakers in our state have been unwilling to pick a fight with local education bureaucrats. Just as turkeys don’t vote for Thanksgiving, local education bureaucrats tend not to support the idea that families should have control of their tax dollars.
Once families in our state are given control of between $7,000 – $9,000 per child each year, those families will be able to allocate the money to a school of their choice. School superintendents, many of whom are paid more than the Governor, would lose the power to allocate that money the way they want.
If we are to overcome these kinds of vested interests, Mississippi needs leaders who will lead on school choice.
Instead, many officials in our state prefer to indulge the myth of the Mississippi education ‘miracle’ – the fantasy that we are seeing spectacular gains in education outcomes.
We aren’t. One in four students in our state is routinely absent from the classroom. Four in ten fourth graders cannot read properly at even basic level. It is nonsense to pretend that there has been a dramatic improvement in education standards in our state.
The Mississippi education ‘miracle’ is a narrative born of convenience, not fact. It suits elected leaders who want us to believe that on their watch things are improving. It flatters those in the public policy space to imagine that this or that reform they helped implement years ago, before today’s fourth graders were even born, is somehow helping young people learn.
What the myth of the Mississippi education ‘miracle’ actually does is reduce the chance that we make the changes our state needs.
To be fair, many politicians pay lip service to school choice in various speeches. They like to cite their support for Charter Schools.
Although a law was passed a decade ago to allow Charter Schools, the administrative state in Jackson has done all it can to stifle the growth of Charter Schools. The Charter Authorizer Board has rejected 80 percent of new school applications. Fewer than 1 percent of schools in Mississippi are Charter Schools.
The question needs to be asked why officials have done so little to change this?
The only significant progress made recently was the 2024 school funding reform which gives every student a personalized education budget that reflects their needs (and in which MCPP was heavily involved). But what good is a personalized budget for students if they cannot spend it at a school of their choice?
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama have made more progress on school choice in the past 12 months than Mississippi has managed in the past 12 years. Our neighbors did so because their state leaders were honest about the true state of education, and the need for change.
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas made school choice her priority, not just a name check item in her speeches. Louisiana managed to pass school choice legislation a few weeks ago despite only having had a Republican governor for a year.
Due to their honesty about the true scale of the task, all three neighboring states now have universal school choice programs that give mom and dad control over their child’s share to education funds.
Parents in Mississippi will start to notice once they see families in neighboring states using school choice.
Team Trump might start to notice those opposing school choice at a state level, too.
Failing to make progress on school choice won’t just harm the careers of Mississippi students. It could damage the careers of any ambitious local leaders wanting to find favor with a future Trump administration in Washington DC.
Real conservatives support school choice.
Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.