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Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro smiles before a crowd in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Aug. 30.
Photo:
Aimee Dilger/Zuma Press
Democrat
Terry McAuliffe
lost his race for Virginia governor last year when he suggested parents should butt out of their children’s education. Florida’s
Charlie Crist
last month named a teachers union president as his running mate. But one Democratic gubernatorial candidate is taking a different approach.
Pennsylvania Attorney General
Josh Shapiro
has quietly endorsed private school choice. His campaign website calls for “adding choices for parents and educational opportunity for students and funding lifeline scholarships like those approved in other states and introduced in Pennsylvania”—language that was absent as of Sept. 7, according to the Internet Archive.
The Lifeline Scholarship bill is an education savings account program that would give families with children assigned to failing public schools the power to reallocate their children’s state education dollars. They could spend that money on any approved education expense, including private-school tuition and fees, tutoring, instructional materials, and special-needs educational services.
Republican state Rep.
Clint Owlett
introduced the Lifeline Scholarship bill, which passed the GOP-led Pennsylvania House in April 104-98, with only one Democrat in favor. The bill then passed the Senate Education Committee in June on a party-line 7-4 vote. The bill has since stalled, perhaps because Senate leadership expected a veto from Democratic Gov.
Tom Wolf,
who has vetoed other school-choice bills.
Some Democrats, such as Colorado Gov.
Jared Polis,
have backed charter schools, but as far as I am aware, Mr. Shapiro is the first statewide candidate in his party to support private-school choice. It’s smart politics. Earlier this summer, a survey by the American Federation of Teachers found Republicans leading on education in battleground states including Pennsylvania.
The latest Morning Consult polling shows that 77% of Pennsylvania parents with children in school support education savings accounts. The latest RealClearOpinion Research polling shows 72% of American voters support school choice, with supermajority support among Democrats as well as Republicans and independents.
Mr. Shapiro attended private schools, as do his children. By supporting the expansion of options for less-advantaged families, he’ll pre-empt Republican accusations of school choice hypocrisy. Pennsylvania parents are already accustomed to school choice. More than 60,000 state scholarships are awarded to K-12 students to attend private schools in the state each year.
Once parents get school choice, they fight hard to keep it. And while Republicans are leading the charge in Pennsylvania as elsewhere, Mr. Shapiro’s shift in policy may be a first step toward bipartisan support for school choice. Parents and children will benefit if others in his party follow his lead.
Mr. DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children.
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Appeared in the September 20, 2022, print edition as ‘A Democrat Defects on School Choice.’
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