Pandemic leads to parental empowerment

When school closing alerts popped into parents’ email boxes on the second day of 2022—unrelated to snow—policy watchers forecast another big year for educational choice. As a new round of COVID cancels in-person instruction as the pandemic nears its second anniversary, many parents across the political spectrum are exasperated. Political pundits are sizing up those sentiments for November’s midterm election, but parents are taking stock of the pandemic’s longer-term toll on their children. Real solutions to this ongoing disruption will permanently empower parents, not just patch up a status quo that leaves them at the margins.

“American children are starting 2022 in crisis,” wrote David Leonhardt of The New York Times on Jan. 4. He cataloged learning deficits, behavioral problems, and mental health challenges emerging after long-running school closures during the pandemic. Test scores are down. Adolescent suicide attempts are up. And parents are distraught.

The Chicago Teachers Union added to the anguish later that same day when its members voted not to return to classroom instruction due to increasing cases of the Omicron variant. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, called it an “illegal walkout” and insisted that students be allowed to return to schools. The mayor and teachers union reached an uneasy truce, and in-person classes resumed on Jan. 12.

While the union froze out students in Chicago, the sun was shining in Phoenix. On Jan. 4, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, announced the Open-for-Learning Recovery Benefit program. To ensure access to in-person instruction, the program offers up to $7,000 in education assistance to qualifying families if their assigned school closes—even for one day. Parents can use funds for tutoring, school transportation, or tuition to provide continuity in their children’s education. Families with incomes of up to 350 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for the Arizona benefit ($92,750 for a family of four).

Advocates of educational choice have long touted the access to safe and effective education that it provides to families. Now stability is the watchword. Like Ducey in Arizona, leaders in New Hampshire are emphasizing the “stable and continuous learning” options available through that state’s new Education Freedom Account. New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut explained that “the pandemic created a clear demand for new and expansive educational options.” Significant response to Education Freedom Accounts has exceeded expectations.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin took office on Jan. 15 after running on the principle that “parents matter.” The Republican’s victory was a wake-up call that parents want changes. His inaugural address promised to keep schools open for students and to empower parents in their children’s education. Youngkin announced plans to add 20 new public charter schools to the seven currently operating in the state. Both Youngkin and Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears have talked about wider school choice options.

New polling shows that more than half of parents during the past year have considered or are now considering a new school for their children. In a Jan. 10 Suffolk/USA Today poll, 66 percent of respondents said they oppose returning to remote learning to address the spread of Omicron.

As Mayor Lightfoot’s showdown with the Chicago Teachers Union reveals, union politics continue to neglect parents’ concerns. A report surveying how teachers unions in seven large school districts across the country responded to the pandemic shows the same pattern. According to the report, none of these unions pushed for a return to in-person instruction. “On the contrary, they were classroom instruction’s primary opponents during the pandemic,” concludes the report’s author, Mike Antonucci.

Meanwhile, liberal parents who have publicly expressed frustration over their children’s lost learning opportunities report backlash for expressing their views. A self-proclaimed progressive mother in San Francisco speculated in early January that liberals’ “pandemic-related myopia” on school closures would end up “alienating parents.”

What weighs on this mom and many others after COVID’s upheaval is that, as Virginia’s new Lt. Gov. Sears, a mother herself, put it, “We don’t get do-overs for our children.” As state legislative sessions begin across the country, policymakers should respond with a permanent course correction by enacting parental choice in education.