If it’s not your full-time job to follow education policy debates you’ve perhaps been struck by the sudden and dramatic string of state-level victories rung up by school choice proponents. We’re less than six weeks into 2023, and already two new states, Iowa and Utah, have adopted “universal ESAs” or education savings accounts, which give parents unprecedented control over their child’s share of education spending, including the ability to use public dollars to pay for private school. Several other states including Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas seem poised to follow suit. Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday became the latest to unveil a universal “education freedom account” that if passed would allow parents “to enroll their kids in whatever school is most appropriate for their family.”

These arrangements hold the potential to profoundly disrupt the long-time American paradigm where the vast majority of kids attend local, district-run public schools. But vouchers and other mechanisms that put parents in control of education spending are nothing new. Economist Milton Friedman first proposed the idea of school vouchers well over half a century ago. So why the sudden rush?

Writing in National Review Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick of the Heritage Foundation note that school choice advocates have switched their political strategy and pitch to state lawmakers. For many years, arguments for school choice were built around “equity” and wonky arguments about efficiency and test scores. But what’s winning lawmakers over is rising parent discontent with what’s happening inside schools.

This is a victory lap for Greene, who took considerable heat last year for a paper he wrote that merely pointed out an obvious fact: School choice is appealing to parents who are concerned about politicized education and social justice initiatives in their children’s schools. His advice was simple and blunt. “It is time for the school choice movement to embrace the culture war,” he wrote. “School choice offers a sensible resolution to cultural debates. School choice gives parents what they want, regardless of which side they are on—more control over their children’s education.”

That’s certainly the line of argument that won over lawmakers in Iowa. Senate President Amy Sinclair tells me that for years, choice advocates relied on data showing improved student achievement. But during COVID, “many parents became aware of anti-American and explicit materials in their child’s classrooms and began to demand choice,” she said. When lawmakers passed measures aimed at greater control of classroom content, “we saw administrators smirking on camera about skirting those laws.” The proliferation of illicit materials in school libraries and curriculum continue unabated. “Rather than continue to play Whack-A-Mole the only real, lasting solution to the concerns parents brought to us was full school choice,” said Sinclair.

The string of red state school choice victories further suggests that arguments against choice on test score grounds are misreading the moment. Even if you’re a culture war non-combatant, arguing for or against school choice on the basis of test scores has long seemed like a narrow, misguided approach. Looking to test-based evidence—and no further—to decide whether choice “works” makes two extraordinary, unquestioned assumptions: that the sole purpose of schooling is to raise test scores, and that district schools have a place of privilege against which all other models must be measured and justify themselves. Neither of these makes much sense. Choice allows parents to educate their children in accordance with their own needs, desires, and values.

Lawmakers seem to be getting the message.

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