Some rural voters resist school choice, prioritizing rural schools

Boone County, Iowa, October 19, 2024
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

The Wall Street Journal reported this week under the headline "Trump’s School-Choice Agenda Hits 

Pushback From Red-State Voters."  The gist of it is that some voters in "red states"--often thought of as synonymous with rurality--voted against school choice measures even as they supported Trump and his agenda, which includes "school choice."  Here's an excerpt from Matt Barnum's story: 

President-elect Donald Trump has made school choice a core tenet of his plan to remake education—but it isn’t clear his voters are on board.

Trump has indicated that he supports public funding of private schools and other options outside traditional school districts. “We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want,” Trump said in a campaign video. “It’s called school choice.”

Yet school-choice ballot measures lost in three states in the November election, including in two that went strongly for Trump, Kentucky and Nebraska. The results suggest a divide between Republican lawmakers and voters, many of whom have said in opinion surveys that they are generally dissatisfied with what they view as a “woke” agenda in public education but still like their own children’s local schools. 

To school-choice supporters—which include some parents, Republican politicians and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation—subsidizing private or other options outside traditional school districts gives parents more say in their children’s education. Teachers unions, Democrats and some public-school parents say that giving families money to go elsewhere drains needed resources from public schools.

About a dozen prior posts linking so-called school choice to the well-being of rural schools--written over the course of more than a decade, are here.