Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation and the lead author, told The Epoch Times that the report measured parent empowerment: “While we consider academic outcomes—particularly as a return-on-investment for taxpayer dollars measure—this report card is really about assessing the power that parents have in directing their children’s learning.”
“This report is distinct from everything else out there because we measure education freedom,” she added.
The overall ranking was measured on whether parents can choose a school to send their children to, be it a public, private, or charter school that is also public but not run by the school districts; transparency of school curriculum and programs; regulatory freedom in curriculum options; and per-pupil spending.
The regulatory freedom category tracked the number of chief diversity officers (CDO) in school districts with 15,000 students or more and whether schools used Common Core testing requirements, which limits curriculum options.
Emphasis on Parental Rights
The Heritage report was released days after the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “the Nation’s Report Card,” announced that age 9 students in 2022 showed the most significant average score decline in reading since 1990 and the first ever dip in math score since the 1970s.The state-by-state data isn’t available yet. However, at the report launch event in Orlando on the same day, Gov. Ron DeSantis predicted that the COVID-related learning loss in the Sunshine State would be less than that in the “lockdown states”—states that closed their schools during the pandemic.
The governor was proud that Florida ranked number one on the Heritage Foundation’s education freedom report card. He said that since he became Florida governor in 2019, “our emphasis on the rights of parents to help direct the education and upbringing of their kids” has probably been “the most significant flashpoint” in Florida and even all over America.
He summarized Florida’s achievement in schools as keeping in-person learning during the pandemic, banning critical race theory—a quasi-Marxist framework that views America as systematically racist—and increasing civics studies, removing the “hardcore pornography” books in libraries, and stopping transgender ideology and gender transition without parents’ knowledge or consent.
“What we have shown in Florida is you can succeed. You can stand for regular people, and we can beat these elites across the board,” DeSantis said at the event, adding that parents and students should be in charge.
Taking Back Schools for Parents
At the celebration event in Orlando, Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative think tank, hailed the report as “the most important research product a think tank could produce because it is the lever for taking back our schools for our kids, our parents, and our family.”Colin Sharkey, executive director of the Association of American Educators (AAE), a non-union professional educators organization, welcomed the Heritage report. “Information is power, and The Heritage Foundation has done a great service to parents, educators, and voters by collecting and thoughtfully organizing information about school options for our kids,” he told The Epoch Times.
School Choice in Virginia
The report certainly caught the attention of Natassia Grover, director of Virginia for Educational Freedom (VEF), an advocacy group for school choice programs. Virginia’s overall ranking was 20 out of 51. However, its school choice ranked 42.
“I’m not surprised to see such a poor ranking for School Choice in [Virginia],” she told The Epoch Times. “It truly is disappointing, with all the campaign promises they made, that the governor and the Republican caucus have not passed real School Choice in Virginia.”
The bill, aiming to make an ESA program effective in September 2022, didn’t pass the state legislature earlier this year. In 2016, former Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed a school choice bill that would have enabled ESAs. Later, in 2017, then-Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, also a Democrat, cast the tie-breaking vote in the Virginia Senate to stop ESA-related legislation.
“If we’re really going to break the government monopoly on education in Virginia, we have to put heavy pressure on the governor and the Republican caucus. And that’s exactly what we plan to do,” she added. “Proof will be whether or not the governor and Republican leadership support this effort.”