The dangerous myth of "school choice"

Another unconstitutional Christian nationalist ploy is growing

“Freedom” and “choice” are common anthems in American politics.

While you’ll rarely hear about “choice” when it comes to gender identity or women’s healthcare from the right, you’ll drown in it when it comes to the first two constitutional amendments—and, increasingly, education.

The 1st amendment claim is especially rich, given that those screaming for freedom of speech tend to have the the largest platforms. Wired performed a public service by publishing the social media reach of this year’s top political influencers on American politics:

The same goes for the following amendment: scream “they’re taking our guns” when any indication of common-sense regulations are introduced, watch gun sales spike nationwide.

Bait-and-switch is a common political tactic. Creating the illusion of scarcity of choice helps slowly inch the goalposts toward the actual goal. In this case, I want to focus on taxpayer money being funneled into private religious schooling—not ironically, something the 1st amendment explicitly prohibits.

Consider Project 2025. The right has long used “school choice, (or “education choice”) as a ploy to have taxpayers fund religious—Christian—schooling. (Similar attempts to fund Muslim schooling were immediately shut down by Christian groups.)

School choice is presented as a seemingly beneficent idea: every child should be able to choose what school they want to attend! In reality, it’s a way of diverting public funds to private institutions.

Here’s the language being weaponized in Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Education—a department that the author, Lindsey M Burke, wants to dismantle.

In our pluralistic society, families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments that best fit their needs. Our postsecondary institutions should also reflect such diversity, with room for not only “traditional” liberal arts colleges and research universities but also faith-based institutions, career schools, military academies, and lifelong learning programs.

Sounds nice, but it’s anything but.

Part of the diversion of funds occurs through “education savings accounts,” a conservative tactic that ensures “no free public schooling.” ESAs are similar to FSAs, “flexible savings accounts,” which let you to contribute pre-tax dollars from your paycheck to cover healthcare expenses. Sounds great, right? But what’s it obscuring?

The fact that the hundreds of dollars most of pay each month for health insurance still isn’t enough to cover your health expenses. Sure, you can use an FSA to cover basics like aspirin, but in practice a lot of people store cover primary healthcare costs with it.

An ESA lets you to pay for your children’s education expenses from K-12 with tax-free earnings. Just like FSAs obscure the fact that they’re a “perk” in a nation with a crippling for-profit healthcare system, ESAs are simply a bandaid on the fact that we don’t have free schooling in America, save public schools (which are taxpayer-funded, of course).

But the right doesn’t like public schools because of that whole “you can’t pray here” thing, so ESAs allow you to use pre-tax money to “choose” where your child goes to school. That money, which would normally be taxed, becomes tuition for religious schooling.

Then there are the popular “school vouchers,” mechanisms that allow parents to use taxpayer money to send their children to religious institutions. These programs are designed to provide families with more educational “choices” by redirecting funds that would typically go to public schools to cover private school tuition.

This isn’t an isolated practice: billions of taxpayer dollars are being redirected from public schools to private, predominantly religious schools.

While I knew this practice was increasingly common in conservative Christian circles, new reporting made me drop my jaw about just how bad it’s become.