National School Choice Week is drawing to a close, and we at State Budget Solutions are participating in the discussion with our own perspective on the benefits that school choice provides for state budgets. School choice, an education philosophy that includes a variety of approaches ranging from voucher programs to traditional and online charter schools, has been increasingly debated in the past few years. Several documentaries, such as The Cartel and Waiting for Superman, have called attention to systemic problems within America's education system from both sides of the political spectrum, presenting school choice as a possible solution to American test scores that are flat-lining or plummeting at the same time that state and federal education spending rises to all-time highs. The idea that parents should be able to pull their children out of failing schools or simply make their own decisions in the education of their children is gaining steam.

This movement toward school choice as a good thing; school choice helps out struggling state budgets as well as struggling student test scores. In 2011, we wrote several pieces about the savings that various school choice policies provided that year. For example, in Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Foundation reported that virtual school programs saved the state's taxpayers more than $146 million in the 2005-06 school year and an additional $109 million from 2008-09, preventing school over-crowding and alleviating the need for costly construction projects. In the same state, Gov. Tom Corbett's education plan also emphasized the benefits of school choice, citing the efficiency of voucher programs. Ohio's Gov. Kasich and especially Indiana's Gov. Daniels have both embraced virtual education and broader school choice platforms as well, citing both the benefits of educational freedom and their states' budget gaps as compelling arguments for choice.

School choice can ease state budgets in many ways. As previously noted, virtual education cuts down on physical costs and allows states to afford a wider variety of classes than they could otherwise offer their students. Charter schools are free to reduce inefficiencies in the public school model and hire teachers who want to remain free of the powerful teachers unions (weakening the powerful unions' ability to use their substantial influence to drive politics and place additional financial requirements on already-strapped state budgets). School choice provides incentives for taxpaying parents to stay within the state, rather than look elsewhere for the education they want for their children.

Perhaps most compellingly, school choice ensures an element of competition that supports good schools while depriving less effective schools of the state funding that accompanies each child from school to school. This competition helps states get the most out of their education budgets, ensures that taxpayer money is well-spent, avoids the "throw more money at the problem" method that plagues so many state education budgets, and keeps education a priority when floundering states are forced to make painful budget cuts.

Let's hope that 2012 has more victories for school choice in store--both for the students whose futures are on the line and for the states who need all the budget help they can get.

Filed Under : K-12 Education

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