I recently attended a conservative policy event that focused in part on promoting the benefits of universal school choice. It reaffirmed my opposition to this legislative trend, even though such laws would be financially lucrative to my business and me personally. The Texas state legislature last week removed universal school choice from a massive reform package. Lawmakers were wise to do so, for several reasons.

First, school choice fosters economic dependency on government funding. Second, it is not a “free-market” solution. Finally, it isn’t a conservative policy, even if the big think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity have jumped on board the taxpayer gravy train. Hats off to Texas legislators for not jumping into the deep end with Senate Bill 1, as other states have done and, I believe, will later regret.

Have you seen the shirt that says, “I don’t co-parent with the government”? If universal school choice is enacted, then everyone will be co-parenting with the government.

Demand-side economics is why we’ve experienced massive inflation around the United States. A Heritage Foundation study that concluded Arizona-style education savings accounts are not inflationary is deceptive, in part because the study’s authors didn’t use data that reflects the current laws being passed. The Heritage study based its findings on school choice that targets individuals with learning disabilities and low incomes, as opposed to people already paying for their child’s private education.

In short, Heritage compared apples to oranges and advocates oranges because of apples. That isn’t sound reasoning.

Besides, since when has relying on the government to subsidize healthy middle-class and rich families’ income ever been considered “conservative” policy?

Government funding of school choice creates economic dependency, it is not a free-market solution, and it isn’t a conservative policy in any sense of the term.

Advocates of universal vouchers and ESAs argue they are a “free-market” solution. Not really. Someone pushing universal school choice once told me that a free market is when the government gives everyone the same amount of money and they can spend it anywhere they want. All I could think of was Inigo Montoya from “The Princess Bride”: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Investopedia defines a “free market” as “one where voluntary exchange and the laws of supply and demand provide the sole basis for the economic system, without government intervention.” Clearly, the government giving families $8,000 a year, sourced from their neighbors’ taxes, is not a free-market solution.

A system of universal basic education income is not a conservative policy. It is a neo-liberal policy. Just wait for Amazon, Disney, Microsoft, and Apple to start buying up schools and implementing their ESG goals on all private school platforms. Wait until they start data-mining your kids. Just wait for China to start buying up private school platforms and data-mining your children.

Let me leave you with a story. My friend Rachel is a leader for Classical Conversations in Arizona, and we don’t let our Christian leaders take neo-liberal school choice funds. She was recently talking to a friend who had taken the ESA money and was so happy to have the funds.

“I used to have to work part-time to homeschool,” her friend told her. “I would have my aunt come over and watch the kids for me so that I could go to work. Now I don’t have to do that!”

Rachel, being trained in the tools of rhetoric, politely replied: “So let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. You used to rely on hard work and your family, and now you rely on the government.” Her friend’s eyes got wide as she began to realize what she had done.

I would urge legislators to drop school choice proposals altogether, until we have a better idea of how programs that have already passed in other states are working. States’ tax receipts are starting to plummet as the looming recession becomes more apparent. A state surplus in funds can quickly turn into a deficit, and welfare programs like school choice are notoriously hard to repeal, even when they become economically unsustainable.

Government funding of school choice creates economic dependency, it is not a free-market solution, and it simply isn’t a conservative policy in any sense of the term.

For more than a century, the K-12 education system in the United States has been monopolized by poor-performing government-run public schools that have little to no competition because the education funding method is fatally flawed. Fortunately, one of the few silver linings that has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic has been a surge in support for school choice and the enactment of a more market-driven approach to education funding: universal school choice via vouchers, commonly called education savings accounts.

Universal school choice is a long-overdue reform that has gained momentum in recent years. Unlike the antiquated system in which state and local governments collect taxes for education and then distribute those funds directly to public schools, universal school choice distributes education tax dollars directly to parents so that they can choose the school that best fits the unique learning needs and circumstances for their child.

This is a superior education funding process compared to the status quo because it introduces market forces, principally through competition in the education marketplace, which has been sorely lacking for far too long. It also leads to much-needed innovation in the increasingly stale, one-size-fits-all government-run education sector.

As of 2023, approximately 90% of K-12 students in the United States attended a public school. This is not by choice. In fact, most parents would prefer their child to attend a different school rather than the one and only public option arbitrarily assigned to them based on their zip code.

This is especially true for parents with children stuck in poor-performing and unsafe public schools located in inner cities. In recent years, as standardized test scores show, these public schools have done a miserable job of properly educating their students for a successful future.

Two of the most appealing aspects of the school choice revolution under way across the nation are that it leads to less education spending and better academic outcomes.

One way or another, the government (whether at the local, state, or federal level) is going to play a large role in the education funding system.

On average, K-12 public schools spent $14,347 per pupil in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, several states, including New York, Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey, spent in excess of $20,000 per student. The average annual tuition rate for the nation’s 22,440 private K-12 schools is much lower, at $12,350 per student.

In general, private schools are more affordable than public schools because they lack the enormous bureaucracies that have become commonplace in bloated public school districts. Private schools are more streamlined and devote more of their resources directly to classrooms, while public schools and their overweening district offices divert limited resources to countless programs that have little to do with boosting educational outcomes but lots to do with perpetuating bureaucracy.

What’s more, students attending private schools consistently outperform their public school peers on nationwide standardized tests including the National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”

Of course, universal school choice has no shortage of critics. But most of these opponents have an agenda, and most work within the existing public school monopoly.

Take teachers' unions, for example, which have battled school choice for decades. Unions argue that school choice programs take education dollars away from public schools, harm low-income families, and widen achievement gaps. These arguments are weak, at best, considering that public school funding has increased substantially in recent years while academic outcomes have remained stagnant and achievement gaps either have remained the same or gotten worse.

Others deride universal school choice and voucher programs as the antithesis of a free market, arguing that state and local governments should not provide large sums of money to parents for educational purposes because it is inflationary and akin to a subsidy. This is misguided.

We live in a society in which we agree that some degree of compulsory education is necessary for the preservation of our freedoms, values, and way of life. One way or another, the government (whether at the local, state, or federal level) is going to play a large role in the education funding system. But it is much more in line with free-market principles for the government to offer education dollars directly to the consumer (parents) versus the other way around, where government showers money on the provider (in this case, the public schools).

Think of it this way: The government gives out subsidies in the form of food stamps, but it does not require that those funds be spent in a government-run grocery store. If that were the case, could you imagine how lousy the government-run grocery stores would be? The government-run grocery stores would surely know that they are the only option, which would deter improvements and innovations.

The same logic should apply to government funding for education. Under the present circumstances, government plays an outsized role in education funding. We would be vastly better off we limited the government’s role by making it merely a conduit of funds directly to parents, who would use the money to ensure their children receive the best education possible — whether that’s at a public school, private school, parochial school, charter school, or even homeschooling.