“School Choice:” Its Origins and Long History

 This blog post was written by Isaiah Horne, master’s student in the History Department

The 1950s and 1960s was an era defined by change, turmoil, and new forms of expression and art. This period of unprecedented economic growth, racial turmoil, international conflict and war, movements for civil rights and independence, the blooming of television, the explosion of Beetlemania, and the moon landing flood public memory and occupy historians’ attention. As a result, thousands of stories, narratives, legal changes, and political battles have fallen into the cracks, forgotten. However, many of the forgotten struggles and changes of the 50s and 60s have resurfaced to have a monumental impact on American lives today, particularly in the realm of education.

A careful look at the structure of American education and the climate of educational politics reveals a heightened focus on “school choice.” In recent years, “school choice” has become a buzzword among parents, school boards, government agencies, and politicians alike. In the broad sense “school choice” has been defined as government funds being used to support a family or student’s choice for their education. One need only to look out at the educational landscape to understand just how many choices are provided to families and students today. In the state of Texas, for example, families can choose between public schools, public magnet schools, charter schools, private schools, homeschooling, and online courses.^[2] Growing opportunities for a variety of schooling opportunities has increased debates among Americans about these institutions including the distribution of federal funding to varied school systems, the presence or lack of equal educational opportunity, how varied school environments might meet children’s needs or families’ financial needs, amongst a plethora of other issues. Most notably are concerns and discussions surrounding government funded vouchers that could be used to allow families and students to choose private education or other forms of learning. One begs the question; how did we get here? When did “school choice” become a prominent feature of modern American education? The answer lies in the cracks of the 1950s and 1960s and the collected materials of Texas Congressmen W. R. Poage held at the Baylor W. R. Poage Legislative Library and Special Collections.

The ability to choose one’s school has a long and complicated history tracing back to the 18th and 19th centuries in which the first public and private schools were established in the United States. However, “school choice” has a far different meaning than a simple decision between public versus private education. Current discussions of “school choice” find their origins amid the racial turmoil and Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. At the time, schools in the United States operated under a dual school system; there were designated schools for black children and schools for white children. Dual School systems were established because of the U. S. Supreme Court Decision Plessy V. Ferguson, in 1896, which allegedly established “separate, but equal” public facilities for white and black Americans.^[3] Several decades later in 1954, however, the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned its previous decision in the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. On May 17th, 1954, the United States Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision, declared that segregated public school systems were unequal and therefore unconstitutional.^[4] The Brown ruling, as a result, sparked a decades long-struggle to integrate black and white schools and provide equal educational opportunities to children of all races and ethnicities. In the subsequent year, 1955, the United States Supreme Court passed the Brown II ruling, declaring school integration must occur with “all deliberate speed.”^[5] Throughout the country, the United States government oversaw and implemented several policies and guidelines to ensure the integration of public schools.

Shortly after the Brown II ruling, in 1955, economist Milton Friedman authored a foundational paper, “The Role of Government in Education,” in which he proposed a shift in funding and governance mechanisms for public K-12 schools, suggesting that parents be awarded tuition vouchers that they could use to pay for private sector education services for their children, rather than relying on government provided schools.^[6] The first tuition voucher programs have been in place in the United States since the mid-1800s in states such as Vermont and Maine, where families were offered tuition vouchers to use if they did not live in a locality with public schools. However, Friedman’s proposal sought to expand the use of vouchers throughout the United States and to establish a new educational system. For Friedman, it was essential that education model the broader American “free market society.” As a result, he argued the reduction of government intervention in education through tuition school vouchers would allow a “free market” to exist producing competition among “sellers” (schools) and choices for “consumers” (students and families). Friedman argued, the creation of a “free market society” in the realm of education would allow students and families to make the “best choices” whether that be at a public school, for profit or nonprofit private schools, or religious institutions. It is Friedman’s theories surrounding education that earned him the label: “father of school choice.”

As early as the 1950s, state legislators, school officials, and parents pushed for Milton Friedman’s theories surrounding education. However, in its initial iterations “school choice,” particularly in the South, produced one of the negative outcomes predicted by Friedman in his article. He stated that “free choice” has the potential to exacerbate class distinctions.^[8] Friedman notes in his article that when given choices, parents would likely choose to send their children to schools with students from similar backgrounds, reducing the “healthy intermingling of children from decidedly different backgrounds.”^[9] Following the Brown ruling, schools across the South attempted to avoid integration by closing public schools and/or offering tuition vouchers to students to attend private schools exclusively for whites, termed today by historians as segregation academies. Thus, the opportunity for “school choice” exacerbated not only class distinctions, but also racial and ethnic separation. Friedman addressed this issue, arguing that “school choice” trumped the integration of schools stating “Under [a choice] system, there can develop exclusively white schools, exclusively colored schools, and mixed schools. Parents can choose which to send their children to. The appropriate activity for those who oppose segregation and racial prejudice is to try to persuade others of their views.”^[10] Though Friedman would publicly state he deplored segregation, he was not in favor of forced “non-segregation,” as evidenced by his statement. Though segregation academies were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1964, voucher programs persisted that enabled segregation to occur throughout the United States.

Though the negative outcomes of “free choice” were evident early on, the United States government continued to support the theories behind “free choice” following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the implementation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare’s school integration policies in 1966. Under these policies the United States government supported “freedom of choice” plans with the hope desegregation would occur as “students select their schools instead of being assigned to them on a geographic basis.”^[11] According to government materials in the “Poage papers,” the Department of H.E.W. theorized that naturally schools would integrate as white students would choose schools with black populations and black populations would choose schools with white populations.

Under this view, the government supported “freedom of choice” plans as far as they completed the intended purpose of eliminating segregated systems stating, “their only purpose is to ensure that reasonable progress is made in the elimination of these [segregated] systems.”^[13] This strategy was developed to combat residential segregation that had developed over several decades due to racialized housing and bank policies. Though the government supported “school choice” plans for students and used it as a tool of desegregation, often “freedom of choice” plans during this period were not in fact free, as the U.S. Office of Education found in 1966 that typically the community atmosphere is such that black parents are fearful of choosing a white school for their children. Often their reluctance is due to hostility expressed in the form of violence, intimidation or harassment clearly intended to prevent black parents and children from choosing a predominately white school.^[14] Evidently, “freedom of choice” plans in their first applications often perpetuated further distinctions between varying groups of people, and were not offered on an equal basis to all participants violating the “free market” principles first outlined by Friedman. A quick glance at the past has revealed one of the most fundamental and controversial features of “school choice:” the possibility of deeper entrenched racial, ethnic, and class separation.

In recent decades, the popularity of “school choice” programs have grown significantly, as increasingly more Americans across the country lobby state legislatures to loosen “school choice” laws allowing more educational opportunities to become available. As of 2013, 18 states and the District of Columbia had some form of publicly funded tuition voucher (or tax credit) systems in place.^[15] Today, 30 U.S. states, plus Washington D. C., have some kind of voucher or tax credit program put into place. In the country’s largest voucher program Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship, has already served more than one hundred thousand students as recently as 2020-21.^[16] Voucher programs are supported by both sides of the political spectrum. Often supporters on the political right advocate “free choice” with the original “free market” arguments expressed by Milton Friedman in 1955. While advocates on the political left seek to establish a more equitable and equal educational system for underprivileged and underrepresented groups through a voucher program system, with the hopes of granting these students more educational opportunities that fit their unique needs.^[17] Amid current debates concerning “school choice,” racial, ethnic, and class separation remain a key concern and a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed.

^[1] Photograph by unknown creator. José Luis Ferreira,“School Vouchers,” Mapping Ignorance, 19 Feb. 2018, mappingignorance.org/2018/02/19/school-vouchers/.

^[2] “Alternative Schooling.” Texas Education Agency, 13 Jan. 2020, tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/general-information/finding-a-school-for-your-child/alternative-schooling.

^[3] “Brown v. Board of Education (1954).” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education#:~:text=On%20May%2017%2C%201954%2C%20U.S.,amendment%20 and%20was%20 therefore%20 unconstitutional.

^[4] Rebecca Brückmann, Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation, (The University of Georgia Press, 2021), 18.

^[5] “Brown v. Board of Education (1954).” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education#:~:text=On%20May%2017%2C%201954%2C%20U.S.,amendment%20 and%20was%20 therefore%20 unconstitutional.

^[6] Dan Laitsch, “After 60 Years, Do the Arguments for K-12 Vouchers Still Hold?,” Page 23.

^[7] Milton Friedman, 1977. Photograph by unknown creator. Allen Tullos, “Segregationists, Libertarians, and the Modern ‘School Choice’ Movement.” Southern Spaces, 4 June 2019, southernspaces.org/2019/segregationists-libertarians-and-modern-school-choice-movement/.

^[8] Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” 1955, la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEEFriedmanRoleOfGovttable.pdf.

^[9] Dan Laitsch, “After 60 Years, Do the Arguments for K-12 Vouchers Still Hold?,” Page 23.

^[10] Dan Laitsch, “After 60 Years, Do the Arguments for K-12 Vouchers Still Hold?,” Page 28.

^[11] Letter from John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, to Congressman W. R. “Bob” Poage, April 9, 1966, Page 2, W. R. “Bob” Poage Government Papers, Accession #1C, Box 106, Folder 8, Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.

^[12] Photograph. “School Choice Form,” Groesbeck Public Schools, Office of Superintendent, W. R. “Bob” Poage Government Papers, Accession #1C, Box 109, Folder 2, Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University

^[13] “Racial Balance Statement,” Office of Equal Educational Opportunities, U. S. Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, January 1967, Page 6. W. R. “Bob” Poage Government Papers, Accession #1C, Box 106, Folder 8, Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.

^[14] “Freedom of Choice Plans Statement,” Office of Equal Educational Opportunities, U. S. Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, January 1967, Page 2, W. R. “Bob” Poage Government Papers, Accession #1C, Box 106, Folder 8, Baylor Collections of Political Materials, W. R. Poage Legislative Library, Baylor University.

^[15] Dan Laitsch, “After 60 Years, Do the Arguments for K-12 Vouchers Still Hold?,” Page 28.

^[16] John D. Singleton, “40 Years of School Choice: How American Education Is Being Reshaped.” The 74, 23 Jan. 2024, www.the74million.org/article/40-years-after-a-nation-at-risk-how-school-choice-policies-are-reshaping-american-education/#:~:text=More%20than%20five%20hundred%20thousand,of%20voucher%20program%20in%20place.

^[17] Dominic Walsh and Sarah Self-Walbrick, “Here’s Everything You Need to Know about School Vouchers in Texas,” Houston Public Media, 9 Feb. 2023, www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2023/02/09/443267/heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-school-vouchers-in-texas/.