Every Child Deserves Education Freedom. Let’s Take It Nationwide: Ryan Walters and Jonathan Williams on Fox News
There are many ways to provide education freedom, the key is giving parents more control.
Jonathan Willams, ALEC Executive Vice President of Policy and Chief Economist, recently co-authored a Fox News op-ed with Ryan Walters, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, on working towards education freedom with parental involvement to help give their children the best opportunities.
There has been a largely unreported revolution sweeping through several American states in recent years, and it has been helping students achieve better outcomes based on a simple, intrinsically American idea — give parents more control over how they use their own money and how their children are educated. Over the past three and a half years, all of us have seen the veil lifted on the myriad problems with our government controlled public education system. Politically motivated curricula were exposed en masse, as was the iron triangle of teachers unions, federal bureaucrats and the big government state, local, and federal politicians who do their bidding.
In response, parents across the country have been standing up to take back their control over their children’s education. One of the best ways to do this is to go straight to the reason why so many people are forced into sending their kids to public schools out of necessity: the cost of attendance.
West Virginia became the first state in the country with a near-universal Education Savings Account (ESA) policy in 2021 with the Hope Scholarship Program. ESAs are government-authorized savings accounts that allow public education dollars to truly follow students to the best education for them. They do this by allowing parents to direct their money toward any pre-approved educational expenses that their student needs to achieve and excel.