After years of advocates trying to convince Virginia legislators to follow the lead of states like Florida and Arizona to offer “the-money-follows-the-child” school choice voucher programs, in 2012, Virginia created the Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit to help low-income students get scholarships to attend the schools of their choice. It wasn’t universal school choice for every student, but it was a step in the right direction.
In 2021, with the election of Winsome Earle-Sears as lieutenant governor, the school choice movement had a vocal proponent who teamed up with the Virginia Education Opportunity Alliance to bring forward a bill that would allow more robust school choice for more students.
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The bill offered the political upside of conservative Republicans being the heroes for low-income inner-city neighborhoods where schools were often bad and school choice offered kids away out and potentially a brighter future. That effort was scuttled by rural state representatives whose constituents didn’t have many choices outside of the public schools in their sparsely populated counties.
Now, with the advent of microschools and cooperative schools, as we detailed in a previous column, perhaps now is the time to try to push for greater school choice once again.
The Heritage Foundation conducted focus groups of likely Virginia voters to get their feelings on education, school choice, and parental rights in education. We talked with Heritage Foundation education expert Jonathan Butcher about the results.
Listen here: