Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

Once again, we find ourselves debating the purported merits of school choice – the familiar claim that it is a benevolent mission to save poor children trapped in low-performing public schools. I would argue that this narrative is deeply misleading.

What is framed as reform is, in reality, a last-gasp effort to abandon one of our most essential public goods, a strong system of public education that sustains an informed citizenry and is essential to economic development.

When businesses look for communities in which to locate and grow, the quality of the public schools is not incidental. It is often a tipping point. Employers want a stable educated workforce, communities that attract and retain families, and a place to send their own children.

Why then, would legislators vote against their own community’s long-term prospects? Why would business leaders endorse policies that undermine the very conditions that foster economic vitality?

And geographically speaking, which parents are likely to benefit from “choice” most? Too often, it is those who already have it. Honestly speaking, how is that fair? 

Investing strategically in our public schools and their teachers is what makes public schools good, as is the accountability that accompanies those investments.

My own  20-year investment enabled a close scrutiny of what public schools need to be effective. They need our involvement and constructive evidence-based legislation, such as we saw in the Literacy-Based Promotion Act that put Mississippi on a path to become a model for the nation.

It is readily known that the top states promoting school choice have gone backward in student achievement while Mississippi’s public schools have moved ahead. Our national rankings in 4th-grade reading prove the point that strategic investment works. And it works for our poorest kids.

If school choice is truly about expanding opportunity, consider for a moment what our state would look like if our children scatter across a patchwork of inconsistently regulated options, not knowing where they land, what qualifications their “teachers” will have, if their special needs will be met and whether they are being held to a standard that equips them to become self-reliant individuals

That is not a reliable system. It is a gamble. 

Realistically, few will even have a choice, and even fewer a meaningful one. The promise of “choice” is an illusion, masking a deliberate unraveling of a public system designed to serve a common good.

What, exactly, is American about that? 

Bio: Jim Barksdale of Jackson is a business owner and philanthropist. He is former chief executive officer of Netscape. In 2000, Barksdale created  a program to improve reading levels of Mississippi children. Jim and Donna Barksdale also are Mississippi Today donors and founding board members. Donors do not in any way influence our newsroom’s editorial decisions. For more on that policy or to view a list of our donors, click here.