Improving America’s public and private K–12 schools is the most urgent public policy challenge of our era. Poor-performing schools put at risk the ability of our society to pass along to the next generation the essential core of knowledge that makes civilization possible. A free, open society is dependent on an educated citizenry that can think critically.
What happens in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools profoundly affects the United States’ economic competitiveness and the abilities and values of the next generation of adults. Education will be even more important in the future. Exponential technologies in information and communications, genetic engineering, nanotech, robotics, and artificial intelligence will disrupt labor markets and require new approaches to education.
The key to transforming K–12 education is universal school choice. It is free-market consumer choice that has created the cornucopia of goods and services that enrich our lives today. Choice can accomplish similar feats in education. Legislators in seven states have already enacted universal choice programs as of June 2023. Our goal is to convince their colleagues in the other 43 to do so as well.
