Kevin Carey
If you’re a parent, you may remember the struggle to find good, affordable child care and slots in preschool: waiting lists, eye-watering prices and a gnawing uncertainty about whether you found someplace safe and sound. Finally getting to kindergarten was a relief.
Slowly, and now quickly, public education is fragmenting into something that looks scarily like our dysfunctional child care system. The stress you felt for the first four years could last for 18.
At their best, public schools are a pillar of democracy. They anchor local communities and build common ties among people from different backgrounds. When we learn together as children, we can work together as colleagues and citizens.
Voters have repeatedly made it clear they prefer public education
Most children today remain in traditional public schools, locally governed and free to attend. But in just the past three years, the number of students using some kind of voucher or government-subsidized education savings account to attend private school has doubled, to 1.2 million. As states implement new ESAs sponsored by President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that number is sure to grow.
Chronic absenteeism is down from a peak in 2022, but the percentage of students missing at least 10% of the school year is still twice what it was before COVID-19 in some states.
Public schools have also been battered by technological disruption, from smartphones sapping students’ attention to artificial intelligence apps making it far too easy to cheat. Hundreds of economically struggling districts have reduced the number of days in the school week from five to four.
The Trump administration has vowed to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and proposed steep cuts in federal funding for public schools. Recently, the department announced new layoffs that would almost wipe out the special education office.
By giving everyone a fair chance to learn, we make sure the nation’s talents are fully utilized.
The administration says it wants to empower parents with more educational options for their children. But it only supports choices in the private market – Trump’s budget actually cuts funding for public school options like magnet schools.
We have to invest in public education to fulfill its promise
Such a future of education would be profoundly un-American. Free public schools were a radical idea in the 19th century, when pioneers included them in every state constitution. Schools were a promise to the waves of immigrants who powered American industrial dominance and a means of assimilating people from every corner of the globe. No matter who you were or where you came from, everyone’s children learned in the same place.
There’s a reason that many of the great civil rights struggles of the 20th century were fought over full and equal access to public education.
Instead of giving up on our schools and leaving students to the mercy of the market, this is the time to make good on the parts of public education’s promise that remain unfulfilled. For example, public school districts have very different levels of funding depending on where they’re located, making social and economic inequalities worse. By redrawing school district boundaries, states can make funding more equitable and improve economic and racial integration, without changing where anyone goes to school.
Instead of cutting financial support for special education, we should modernize a too-bureaucratic system with new technologies and support families that could otherwise bankrupt themselves helping their children with special needs. Many public school teachers are stressed out, underpaid and working in buildings that have been allowed to crumble. They need better training and salaries that are competitive with other skilled professions.
Most high school students aren’t going to enroll right away in a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s degree. They need other pathways to a good career, like registered apprenticeships, which allow students to earn a salary and a credential without taking out ruinous student loans.
All of this is hard work. But the first lesson you learn as a parent is that the most important things are hard. Right now, we’re on a path to letting our public education system disintegrate. It’s not too late to remake it better than ever before.
