Every year, the Goldwater Institute is proud to join in the coast-to-coast celebration of National School Choice Week as we highlight the power of true educational freedom. But this year, we have 100,000 more reasons to celebrate this incredible week.
Just last week, Arizona reached an incredible milestone as the 100,000th student enrolled in the state’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts—a program open to all Arizona kids to provide the education they deserve. (The program is known in other states as education savings accounts, or ESAs.)
The fact is, children deserve better than failing schools. That’s why the Goldwater Institute invented ESAs, a school choice reform that empowers parents to choose the education that’s best for their children— instead of forcing them to be stuck in failing schools. More than twenty states have adopted Goldwater’s ESAs, and that number is growing.
It’s parents—not politicians or bureaucrats—who know their children best. Goldwater is dedicated to empowering parents, and our work is paying dividends around the nation. Today, tens of millions of families are free to choose an education that truly meets their child’s unique needs in the states where Goldwater has made universal school choice a reality, including Arizona, where we created the nation’s gold standard for ESAs.
We’re also working to ensure parents can find out what their child will learn before making an enrollment decision. To that end, Goldwater has already passed legislation based on our landmark Academic Transparency Act in Florida and West Virginia to require public school districts to post their learning materials online, with more states on the horizon.
Sadly, countless public schools have abandoned their historic mission as training grounds of American citizenship. But school choice enables parents to immediately place their children in schools that embrace the historic mission of K-12 education: to help students become intelligent and responsible citizens.
This National School Choice week and beyond, we’re celebrating the spirit of America’s potential by championing school choice. And we’re not done yet. Not even close.
