Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
A top conservative think tank and research group has given each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia a grade on its education system and the results, perhaps unsurprisingly, do not smile upon the majority of states most associated with liberalism.
According to the Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card, the state of Florida is the freest state when it comes to matters of parents’ choice and involvement in their children’s learning. Arizona placed second and Idaho third.
Washington, D.C., ranked dead last and was just ahead of New York and New Jersey. California, widely viewed as the most liberal state in the union, checked in at 29th place.
The Heritage Foundation predicated much of its methodology on the writing of Milton Friedman, the late economist and statistician who advocated for an education system that was set up to allow the greatest freedom of choice for parents.
Specifically, Friedman pushed for education savings accounts (ESAs), or vouchers, to help parents of all socioeconomic strata provide their children with the education most advantageous to the child and agreeable to the parent. Friedman opposed inflexible top-down government-administered education systems.
“There has never been a better moment for education freedom,” the report card’s about page reads. “In the modern era, America has never been closer than it is today to realizing Milton Friedman’s vision for universal education choice through education savings accounts (ESAs).”
However, the Heritage Foundation did not limit its tabulation to school choice. In the most general terms, grades were assigned based on each state’s performance in the areas of school choice, transparency, regulation, and spending.
“Florida is the only state with top-10 ranks in every category, including first in Transparency, second in Regulation, and third in School Choice,” the report reads.
As to Washington, D.C., the overall assessment of researchers was, “The District is next to last in Transparency and 49th in spending, only behind New Jersey and Connecticut. Only the District, Illinois, and New York have bottom-10 ranks in three categories.”
According to the organization’s methodology page, researchers factored how states facilitate homeschooling, the ease with which students could switch among state schools, schools’ recruitment of quality teachers, the regulation of the teaching of critical race theory, and the ease with which parents can involve themselves in their children’s education.
Among the subcategories that affected state grades were parental access to curricula and materials used in classes, parental ability to comment publicly at school board meetings, academic achievement compared to dollars spent per student, and a ratio of teachers to non-teachers employed by schools.
“Much of the K–12 public school spending has resulted in more school administrators, not investments in teachers and resources to improve education quality,” the report card methodology section reads. “This variable was calculated by dividing the number of teachers by the number of non-teaching staff in each state in fall 2019.”
In conjunction with the release of its inaugural state report cards, the Heritage Foundation also provided multiple guides for developing ESA-friendly legislation.