Many rural Texans oppose school choice because they fear what might happen to their government schools in the future. A story from Marlin, Texas shows that they would be well advised to be concerned about the present. Marlin’s high school delayed its graduation ceremony because only five of the thirty-three seniors met the requirements to graduate.
Admittedly, the extent of the failure of government schools in Marlin is unusual. But that doesn’t mean that other government schools are doing much better. Last October, the Nation’s Report Card reported that math scores for fourth-graders had fallen five points, while eighth-graders fell eight points. Nearly 40 percent of eighth-graders were deemed “below basic.” Reading scores for both grade levels fell three points. Clearly, government schools are not doing the job to which they were assigned.
School choice enables parents to escape these failing learning environments. Absent school choice programs, many parents have no viable options to government schools. They are stuck with the local government school, no matter how abysmally it is failing their children. And this is particularly true at Marlin High School, where 98.7 percent of the students come from an “economically disadvantaged background.”
I seriously doubt that the parents of Marlin’s students are concerned about what school choice would do to their local school district. They are concerned about the present quality of the education that their children are receiving. And the same is true of parents across the state and the nation.
The opponents of school choice don’t want parents in Marlin or other failing schools to have viable options to government schools. They don’t want to enable each parent to do what is best for his own child.