Next year, he will be headed to the University of Nevada, Reno while she looks forward to starting her middle school years at Legacy Traditional School in Las Vegas. We’re grateful she was accepted by a charter school, as it seems like it will provide a suitable transition from the private school she has attended for the past six years. We never had to consider such a transition for my son. He attended public school from kindergarten through high school.
She might have attended private school from kindergarten through high school too, but school choice, a.k.a. Educational Saving Accounts (ESAs), continue to stall in Nevada. So while I helped campaign for ESAs, writing columns and comments, we also toured and applied to several charter schools where selection is determined by lotteries and waiting lists.
After she was accepted at Legacy, some people wondered why I continued to donate my time in support of ESAs even though my family would no longer benefit. My answer was simple enough. My support of ESAs isn’t about just about my family. It's about all families because I know school choice works. An early version of it changed my education experience and my life.
Affording more parents school choice will course correct more kids.
My grandmother wanted more for me so she intervened. At the end of third grade, she pulled me from the public school system and enrolled in me a private secular school to repeat. While we were too poor to afford it, she somehow managed to secure a hardship grant. I’m grateful.
The new school reassessed the public school system’s perception that I wouldn’t amount to anything and discovered something different. I was only struggling with most subjects because I couldn’t read. They also determined I was gifted in math and art and provided advanced placement curriculum so I wouldn’t become bored with the standard lessons.
The change in classwork changed my outlook. Within the course of one year, I rose from the bottom percentile to one of the top in my class. And as my performance improved, my sometimes unruly behavior — the by-product of being teased in public school for being raised by grandparents and having a visible handicap — dissipated. School choice gave me a chance.
After that school year, my grandparents were no longer able to raise me so I was returned to public school in a different state. The foundation that the private school provided me, despite not being ‘held accountable’ by the state, placed me well ahead of my peers. This never changed.
Sure, I had some ups and downs across the entirety of my educational experience, but my love for learning always persisted. Not only have I become I a lifelong learner, but I also share my passion for education as a part-time continuing education instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — an outcome that would have been an impossibility had some version of school choice not existed for me.
At the end of the day, no matter what political arguments people raise, ESAs come down to one thing. Different students excel in different learning environments. Knowing this, we should be doing everything we can to make it easier for them to be enrolled in the right environment and without any of the pervasive socio-economic and faith-based labels on students or the bureaucratic requirements that frequently restrain public schools from better performance. More choices mean more chances.
