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News Link • Education: Government Schools

The Real Education Litmus Test

• https://www.fff.org, by Laurence M. Vance

The second paragraph endorses universal school choice:

2. Universal School Choice

Republicans believe families should be empowered to choose the best Education for their children. We support Universal School Choice in every State in America. We will expand 529 Education Savings Accounts and support Homeschooling Families equally.

At the convention, Florida governor Ron DeSantis gave a speech in which he said: "We believe schools should educate, not indoctrinate. We stand for parents' rights, including universal school choice." Rep. Byron Donalds — one of the few black Republicans in the House — likewise made the case for school choice at the convention.

Writing for The Daily Signal, which was launched by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, but is now an independent organization, Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick, both fellows in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, are ecstatic about the Republican Party platform's embrace of universal school choice:

For the first time, the Republican Party is signaling to voters and its own politicians that they should pursue policies that enable all families to choose the educational options that align with their values and work best for their own children — whether public or private, religious or secular.

That's a dramatic departure from the platforms the Republicans adopted in 2016 and 2020, which only mentioned school choice in passing and did not fully embrace making choice available to all families.

Before now, Republican politicians could say they were adhering to their party's platform if they were only willing to support school choice policies that were limited to specific populations, like families with low-incomes, students with special needs, or those enrolled in failing public schools.