By Matt Patterson

Teachers’ unions are the main opponents to school choice, the policy idea that all parents should be able to choose where to send their children to school, not the government.

In 1955, Milton Friedman, an economist and Nobel Prize winner, first proposed the idea of school choice in an article, “The Role of Government in Education,” and in 1990, Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program became the first modern private school choice program. Since then, school choice has been expanded to include charter schools, magnet schools, scholarships, and tax credit programs. In fact, there are now 50 private school choice programs in 25 states.

School choice has provided an education and opportunities to low-income children around the country, as well as those with disabilities.

But why do teachers’ unions oppose it?

It creates competition and forces the public schools in low-income areas to provide a good education at a lower cost. Without a school choice program, low-income children are forced to go to their neighborhood public school, while the wealthy get to choose where to send their children (President Obama, an opponent of school choice, chose to send his daughters to the elite private school, Sidwell Friends).

And children with disabilities often don’t get the help they need.

For example, in the District of Columbia, the government spends about $30,000 a year to send one child to the DC public schools. However, in 2015, only 31 percent of DC 4^th grade school children were at or above proficient in math, while only 27 percent were at or above proficient in reading. Only 19 percent were proficient in those areas in 8^th grade. Those numbers have dramatically improved since Congress passed school choice in DC in 2004.

Union leaders know that with school choice, they will have to improve these numbers or else, children will go to school elsewhere, bad schools will shut down, and unions will lose dues-paying members, which is all that they really care about.

According to Al Shanker, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers, unions don’t care about the interests of the children: "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren." Other union leaders have made similar comments.

American citizens, however, are increasingly open to school choice. In a recent poll by Education Next, over half of participants support school choice. State legislators have been responding to their constituents, and the number of school choice programs has grown substantially.

To help legislators continue to pass programs, on September 20, 2016, the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian public interest law firm, and the American Legislative Exchange Council published their second edition of School Choice and State Constitutions: A Guide to Designing School Choice Programs. The publication was authored by IJ Senior Attorney Dick Komer and Olivia Grady, currently research fellow at the Center for Worker Freedom.

The publication is a survey of the political and legal landscape in all 50 states and gives legislators advice on which type of school choice program works best for the state. It also provides legislators with model school choice legislation.

While school choice programs continue to be passed, the programs have been challenged in the courts many times by teachers’ unions and their allies, hoping to maintain the public school monopoly.

Read the publication here.