‘The best thing we can do’: Expert calls for expanding school choice amid declining satisfaction with public schools 

Americans’ satisfaction with K-12 education fell to a 27-year low, but one expert says the solution is to expand school choice.

“Ultimately, the best thing we can do is expand a nationwide universal school choice system,” wrote Larry Sand, a policy adviser at The Heartland Institute and former president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, in a recent column.

A September Gallup poll found just 32% of Americans are satisfied with the nation’s schools, the lowest level since 1999. Nearly half of respondents said schools do a poor job preparing students to think critically and solve problems, while others expressed concerns about workforce preparation.

Academic performance has also fallen. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 12th-grade reading scores have reached their lowest recorded levels, while nearly 70% of fourth- and eighth-grade students are not proficient in reading.

Americans across party lines have expressed dissatisfaction with public education, as previously reported by Heartlander News. Meanwhile, public school districts nationwide are experiencing declining enrollment, including in Maryland, where preliminary figures surprised state education officials.

While school districts nationwide are closing and consolidating campuses to deal with fewer students, Sand argues expanding universal school choice programs is the best long-term solution.

He points to California, where traditional public school enrollment has declined by more than 11% since the 2015-16 school year, while charter school enrollment has increased by nearly 27% during the same period, according to the California Department of Education.

School choice growing 

According to EdChoice, a leading school choice advocacy organization, 75 private school choice programs serve more than 1.5 million students across 34 states. Additionally, 32 states have opted into the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit program ahead of its January 2027 launch. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham opted her state into the program this week, becoming the third Democratic governor to do so.

Beginning in January 2027, the program will allow taxpayers to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 annually, or $3,400 for married couples filing jointly, for donations to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs). These organizations will pool the donations to provide scholarships for educational expenses, including tuition, tutoring and other academic services. Both public and private school students are eligible, but only in participating states. The credit is available to all U.S. taxpayers.

In addition to expanding school choice, Sand advocates consolidating underused schools and removing low-performing teachers. Consolidating schools can help districts reduce remaining operating costs to accommodate declining enrollment.

“Just because your number of students goes down, doesn’t mean that your fixed costs go down,” David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and former New York state education commissioner, told Stateline in an article published by The 74.

Sand cites Aldine Independent School District near Houston, Texas, where enrollment fell from more than 70,000 students in the 2015-16 school year to approximately 48,000. The district closed 14 low-performing schools over three years, reportedly saving millions of dollars in staffing and maintenance costs.

Students reassigned from the closed schools subsequently saw reading scores increase by 7 to 14 percentage points, while attendance improved and chronic absenteeism declined, according to reporting cited by Sand.

“In sum, too many public schools are failing, parents are abandoning them, and much-needed changes are underway, with more hopefully to come,” he wrote.