School choice is a reaction to a problem. If public schools were excellent, most parent would ever look for alternatives. Of course, there are always people who prefer private school. I get it. I went to both private and public schools from K-12, in two countries.
My experience was that US public school education (Massachusetts) from several decades ago was seriously deficient when compared to schooling in a Latin American (Argentina) system. I was far better prepared, across the board, with a classical education, to the point that my classmates in the US seemed, well, pretty ignorant and incapable.
What's terrible is that the situation in the US has likely degraded significantly over the decades. My kids have been through the public system in CA. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that, had it not been for a significant amount of learning at home --across a range of subjects-- they would have come out unprepared for the real world. It's that bad.
I can only imagine how much worse it likely is in less affluent neighborhoods. It must be absolutely terrible.
These topics, for me, always come back to the same issue: Our government failing us across a wide range of verticals. Be it healthcare, safety, education and just plain intelligent progress, their score card is mediocrity at best and, quite often, abject incompetence. Earlier today I was reading about the Department of Transportation only building 7 or 8 EV charging stations with a program funded in 2021 to the tune of $7.5 billion dollars. A similar thing has happened in CA with the sad (and expensive) joke the high speed rail project has become.
At some point voters need to start understanding that the people we are voting for and hiring to work for us could not give one flying turd about any of us, our kids, our safety, our health and wellbeing. They are all political animals interested in the riches to be had through party affiliation and warfare. Nothing else matters. Nothing. And this is how we get here; to a point where we spend insane amounts of money per student in K-12 and end-up with results bested by third world countries.
How you vote matters. And some of these decisions have generational effects.