I was recently struck by something while watching the last Indianapolis Local Education Alliance meeting. The meeting itself explored the possibilities for Indianapolis’ future by looking at the education landscapes in both Denver and Washington, DC. It was fine, if not all that illuminating. But it was the hour or so of public comments that followed those cities’ presentations that grabbed my attention. 

Public comments roughly fell into one of two camps. I wasn’t keeping an exact count but my sense was the number of speakers in each camp were somewhat even.

One camp, the pro-IPS folks, spoke of safeguarding education from “privatization,” warding off “oligarchy,” and ensuring public schools get “fully funded.” Many of their requests for the ILEA closely mirrored those of the Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America’s “Fully Funded, Fully Public,” campaign, which I wrote about a while back. I think it’s safe to assume, given the mostly uniform red shirts of these speakers, that many of the speakers were themselves Central Indiana DSA members. 

The second camp, the pro-school choice folks, shared many things explicitly supportive of charter schools. But I call them “pro-school choice” because they often veered toward a larger message focused on change and collaboration, not simply a push for an all-charter district (though a few did name that as a recommendation they hope the ILEA makes).

Are Progressive Politics and School Choice at Odds?

I was so struck because I was conflicted. Indeed, my political views would generally be considered a type of left-wing progressive (while I frequently vote, I’ve never been a formal member of any political party). Yet in the education world, I have, for a long time now, found myself squarely in the pro-school choice crowd. That stance puts me squarely at odds with many current progressives, especially the white progressives I encounter (and certainly the Central Indiana DSA).

Which has led to a lot of reflection, especially given I’ve dedicated much of my professional life to supporting school choice (though not, as I’ve made clear before, private school choice). Certainly, part of why I’ve arrived at the position I have is due to my lived experience. I taught in a public charter school (well, technically an Innovation Network School).

I saw firsthand why so many families chose my school and others like it, even as I’ll be the first to admit many charter schools fail to fully live up to their promises to families (and, of course, so do many traditional public schools, which is part of why I believe charter schools have grown so rapidly in so many places).

Are Charter Schools Just a Right-Wing Privatization Scheme?

I hear a lot of progressives, some who spoke at the ILEA meeting included, claim that charter schools are a just a right-wing billionaire backed plot to dismantle, destroy, and ultimately privatize public education.

I’ll start with a few things I think are unequivocally true. There are a lot of billionaires who have funded school choice efforts, and charter schools in particular, around the country (e.g. the Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Walton Family Foundation, just to name a few). In many states, and this includes Indiana, some of the strongest proponents of school choice programs (charter schools but also increasingly private school vouchers) tend to be Republicans. School choice used to be much more bipartisan. It isn’t any longer in most places, and certainly not in Indianapolis.

But those facts do not, at least for me, add up to dismissing school choice outright as a billionaire plot to dismantle public education.

First, I certainly hold the progressive view that billionaires are bad for society and the root cause of much of the political division and dysfunction gripping our country. At the same time, I don’t think that simply because a billionaire supports something that it is always a bad thing to support.

Second, I’m almost always at odds with the statewide and national Republican party. It’s no home for someone like me. And yet I refuse to disown a position (my support of school choice) simply because the shifting political winds have lodged that position largely in one political camp that I’m predisposed to disagree with the vast majority of the time.

Do Americans Support School Choice?

Public support for something is not the only metric to measure the validity of a position by. But I think it’s useful to look at where most Americans are on something like school choice. Just recently, the Democratic advocacy group Deciding to Win polled Americans on a variety of political issues across different categories, one of them being K-12 education. They found net support of +9 across the American public for “school choice.” In this case, from what I can tell, that remained a broad category capable of capturing things like charter schools and private school choice programs. Meaning, I have an inkling support for just charter schools might be higher than “school choice” as a broad notion (and, as I’ll touch on in a moment, higher among particular groups).

So, from what Deciding to Win found from polling a representative sample of the country, the majority of Americans support school choice. And they support it at a higher rate than other progressive education goals like universal preK and increased Title I funding for low-income schools (note that I’m not saying that’s a reason to ditch those progressive goals; merely that I find it notable where the American public is right now in relation to some of these policies).

Now, just because something is supported by the majority of Americans does not make it a good thing in and of itself. There are majority-held policies worthy of being opposed. And there are minority-supported policies worthy of fighting tooth and nail over because of their deep connection to important values (that’s actually a major gripe I have with Deciding to Win’s analysis of their polling).

But, to me, there’s another important layer here. Support for school choice is often even more strongly supported by Black and Latino families compared to the general public. Take this snapshot leading up to the 2024 elections, where The74’s Lauren Camera covered a poll that asked Black and Latino voters about their K-12 priorities. Camera wrote, “91% of the survey’s respondents say parents deserve the right to choose the public school that best meets their child’s individual needs.”

Where Support for School Choice Becomes Practical, Not Just Theoretical

I’ve often pointed out that Indianapolis charter schools serve a higher proportion of Black and Latino families than do traditional public schools. That’s true nationally as well with about 60% of charter school enrollment made up of Black and Latino families compared to 42% in traditional public schools.

So this support is not just theoretical. It’s practical given the school choices many of these families make for themselves. Instead of declaring charter schools a right-wing billionaire plot, I think it’s more helpful to ask why these Black and Latino families are choosing charter schools at such high rates.

Maybe they’re being led astray by bad-faith advocacy efforts. Maybe they aren’t fully given a choice in light of public school closures or consolidations in places where charter schools have popped. Maybe maybe maybe. But in so many cases they are looking for something better for themselves and their kids given the historical and ongoing failures of our public education system for people who look like them.

If a combination of traditional public schools and public charter schools ends up producing better outcomes for Black and Latino families than just a system of traditional public schools (and, in Indianapolis, it is right now), then I’m going to support this type of school choice. Typical progressive positions be darned.