No, Segregationists Weren’t the Driving Force Behind School Choice
PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR school vouchers is on the rise, with 58 percent of respondents in a 2019 Education Next survey favoring the policy. Within the Democratic Party, opinions tend to split along racial lines: Most African-American and Hispanic Democrats support vouchers and charter schools, while most white Democrats oppose them. Indeed, the beneficiaries of currently existing voucher programs draw disproportionately from historically disadvantaged communities. Programs such as the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship draw some 70 percent of their participants from African American and Hispanic households, and studies from several cities—Cleveland, Milwaukee, Washington—suggest that voucher systems improve racial diversity.
These trends have spawned something of an existential crisis among teachers unions. As a result we have texts like , in which attorney Steve Suitts aims to rebrand the entire school choice movement as a surreptitious attempt to reimpose racial segregation. Suitts once wrote a book
You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.
Start your free 30 days