School choice refers to policies that allow public education funds to follow students to their chosen educational setting. This could be a public, charter, private, religious, or homeschool setting.
Opponents say choices harm public districts because parents will use the funds to go to a private or religious school, but Rhyen Staley of Defending Education dismisses that concern.
"Talking with families across the country, there are people that are very happy with their public school districts," he recently told American Family Radio. "We as a family, my personal self, we are very pleased with our public schools here. We do have other smaller Christian options and so forth, but I don't know that we would necessarily leave our public schools here if that were the case."
Staley chalked up the opposition to unions wanting dues or fees from teachers.
"It's a fear often driven by the teachers unions in many cases, because they very much depend upon students in the seats, especially at the beginning of the year," he relayed. "That gets calculated into dollars. The more students, the more teachers. The more teachers, the more dues being paid; the more money goes into the teachers unions. So, a lot of this is often driven by them."
He says the unions are also against charter schools, public schools that operate independently of local school districts under a contract or charter, because unions have fewer members in charter schools than they do in public schools.
Staley's organization, however, is about giving parents choices, which includes public schools.
"There are some good ones around the country," he noted. "We might disagree with some pieces of them, but in the end, we want to empower the parents to be able to have a choice to send their kids where they want to go."
