Texas Senate candidate James Talarico says he is proud to have led the fight against school choice in Texas, arguing that the movement’s roots lie not in parental rights, faith in a free marketplace, or failures within public education, but in “segregation.”
In a clip released Monday, he argued that school choice in Texas originated shortly after Brown v. Board of Education as a way for parents to remove their children from newly integrated schools.
Texas Democrat James Talarico says school choice — which helps kids from lower income households leave failing schools — is rooted in "segregation."
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"I led the fight against this private school voucher bill which has it’s roots in school segregation." pic.twitter.com/VIpsfNuncQ
"And then I led the fight against this private school voucher bill, which has its roots in school segregation," Talarico said. "The first voucher bill was proposed in Texas in 1957, which was just a few years after Brown v. Board. And it was a deliberate attempt to allow white parents to take their kids out of newly integrated public schools and send their kids to white-only private schools. And so I fought tooth and nail to prevent that voucher bill from passing because it would hurt our students, but it would particularly hurt our black students across the state, because we know that public education is underfunded in Texas."
Even if that history were accurate, it does not represent the case for modern school choice.
Today, school choice gives parents of every race and income level greater ability to find an education that fits their children’s academic needs. It's purpose is not to recreate segregation, but to expand opportunity, particularly for families who cannot afford to move to a higher-performing school district or pay a private-school's tuition.
So when James Talarico says he is proud to have fought against school choice, he is not fighting segregation. He is fighting better educational opportunities for children, and a parent’s right to choose.
That has become the calling card of much of today’s Democrat Party: a reflexive refusal to trust families with freedom. Their answer is not found in competition, accountability, or choice. It is to preserve a government-run monopoly in which children are assigned schools by ZIP code, parents are told to accept whatever they receive, and regularly failing systems face no pressure to improve.
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