Over the next few weeks, thousands of Maryland children will walk through the doors of a public school in hopes of gaining an education under the Maryland public school blueprint of “ Delivering opportunity and the promise of a better future to every Maryland child . ” Sadly, for many of these children, and especially those in Baltimore City, the words of this blueprint are worth less than the paper on which they were printed.

It’s no secret that despite budget surpluses and billions of dollars in public funding, Maryland’s government has failed to fix the epidemic of failing schools in our state. Instead, it has joined hands with the teachers unions in promoting the same failing public schools that are actually hurting the educational success of our students. As a result, this school year thousands of Maryland parents will have no choice other than to send their children back to the same public schools that failed them the previous year.

This is why it is past time to offer school choice to all parents statewide — especially those whose children are in schools failing to educate them.

While the teachers unions and many politicians on the Left argue school choice does not improve education, numerous studies show a direct correlation between school choice and better math and reading levels. Researchers at the University of Arkansas’s School Choice Demonstration Project developed an Education Freedom Index to measure school choice environments in the states and Washington, D.C., and found that school choice rankings strongly correlated with higher National Assessment of Education Progress scores for eighth grade math and reading. The study concluded , “Higher levels of education freedom are significantly associated with higher NAEP achievement levels and higher NAEP achievement gains.”

Despite pouring billions and billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars into Maryland’s public school system, our state test results show the math and reading levels of Maryland students have gotten progressively worse — not better. Take, for instance, Baltimore City, which spends an average of $21,606 per student, making it the fourth best-funded school system in America, and yet 93% of Baltimore City’s third through eighth grade students failed math last year. Just last month, our state student achievement scores came out showing less than 5% math proficiency in Baltimore County's seventh and eighth grades and less than 50% reading proficiency statewide in third grade.

I firmly believe Maryland families, and families across our country, deserve options to improve their children’s education. We must increase parental access to Maryland’s school choice program, Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today. BOOST provides scholarships to more than 2,500 low-income Maryland families and gives these children a chance at a quality education. According to the latest data available from the BOOST program, nearly $3 million has been awarded to families in Baltimore City alone. If properly and fully funded, parents whose children are in failing schools could access better quality education through the BOOST program.

We cannot tolerate the status quo when it comes to failing schools, especially for our underprivileged and minority youth who most need and deserve high-quality education. That’s why in Congress, I am a strong advocate for school choice nationally and most recently voted for the Parents Bill of Rights — the only bill that enshrines parents’ role as the primary educator and caretaker of their children.

Maryland parents have spent years voicing their concerns about the state’s poor student achievement results, the increased promotion of woke curricula in the classroom, and the need for access to school choice. To this day, their voices have not been heard, which is a violation of parents’ fundamental rights.

It is time to change that. We cannot continue funding the same public school systems that are failing to properly educate our children and focusing instead on a woke agenda far removed from the basic purpose of education, which is to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. If a child is struggling in a failing public school, parents deserve access to school choice so that they can deliver the opportunity of a better education to their children.

Andy Harris is a U.S. representative for Maryland and serves as the chairman of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and related agencies subcommittee on Appropriations.