Choice is simply the act of choosing. Having a choice is different from making a choice. Without choices we are stuck with whatever we get. In public schools, so long absent a substantial alternative, the clock has struck on a moment of choice for many parents.
In the theater, if one doesn’t like the performance, one can choose to walk out. Fire codes prevent them from locking the doors. For many years in US public education, the doors have been locked to maintain a captive population, forcing parents to send their kids to schools that are more traumatic than academic.
No greater philosopher than Alice Cooper once said, “We like reactions – a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that’s a healthy psychological reaction.”
As tomato throwing is prohibited in most schools, all we are left with is to walk out as an expression of our healthy psychological reaction and rejection of public education.
Walking out of public schools and into charter or private institutions seems to be a popular option for parents who are only now being given a legitimate choice in educating their children.
I served ten years as a School Board Director in Washington State. In 2012, that state’s supreme court made funding education the “paramount duty” of state government in what is known as the McCleary Decision.
Since that decision, Washington State has increased their public ed spending by $15.2 billion dollars. Per student funding has grown from $8,000 per year to $15,000 per year, depending on who you believe. It’s clear Washingtonians spend well more on education now than they did prior to 2012.
Of course, because of this increased spending student achievement has improved, right?
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is according to their website, “the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what our nation’s students know and can do in subjects such as mathematics, reading, science, and writing.”
According to NAEP’s ‘Nation’s Report Card’ for 2024 Washington scored 238 out of 500 in mathematics compared to 288 in 2011, the year prior to the McCleary Decision.
The old saw that a lack of money in public education prevents our students from success, is both rusty and toothless. States apportion funding on a full-time-equivalent (FTE) basis. School districts get paid for each full-time student enrolled.
For years, School Board colleagues, teachers and even parents criticized charter schools and student voucher proposals as “stealing” from public education. These folks said if parents want to send their children to use these alternatives they should do so on their own dime.
If the state pays a per-student fee to schools to enroll children then that money should be available to charter, private schools, or in the form of vouchers for those choosing the alternatives. Tax paying citizens shouldn’t be punished because they choose a better option for their children. It is, after all, their tax dollars.
Public education fears the shortage of dollars more than academic shortcomings or dwindling enrollment. They want more money, despite fewer students and poor results.
If public schools wish to avoid an outflow of students, they could improve the product. They could recommit themselves to the 3Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic. We could trust our curriculum and teachers to elevate students to meeting academic benchmarks, not to dumbing it down or “teaching to a test.”
As President Trump highlighted in his State of the Union Speech when he introduced Sage Blair, things in our public schools have gone from bookish to bizarre.
In eighth grade, Sage became gender confused. Instead of contacting her parents, her school kept the situation a secret from her parents, even as they were referring to her as “he” and facilitating her gender dysphoria. Sage’s deteriorating mental state resulted in her running away from home and being sex trafficked.
School is intended to be a place of learning not an enabler of mental illness. Any school that keeps pertinent medical and psychological information from parents to support a psycho-sexual socio-political movement is an abductor, not an educator.
Between 2023 and 2025, the Houston Independent School District, as reported by Houston Public Media, lost more than 16,000 students. In Arizona since 2010, student enrollment is down along with math and reading proficiency scores while school spending is up 80%.
On January 9th of 2026, the Seattle Times reported, “The number of students in Washington’s public schools fell by 9,000 this school year, the biggest single-year drop since enrollment began emerging from pandemic-era lows, according to new state data shared Thursday. Statewide, public-school enrollment is about 50,000 students lower than it was in the 2019-20 school year.”
Americans need alternatives and thanks to states like Texas, school voucher, and charter school programs, they’re getting them.
Alice Cooper’s biggest hit could be a clarion call for U.S. public education, “Schools Out” because parents are choosing new options.
Public education can be better, and it can serve the needs of our nation’s students, but only if it reverses course and stops being, as Mr. Cooper says, ‘Crap That Gets in the Way of Your Dreams’.
Or it can remain a place where Mr. Cooper’s make-up style is more important than the well-being and learning of students.
Either way, many parents are choosing out of public schools.
