Movie showed value of school choice

I’m a senior at Wauconda High School, and I recently attended a screening of the film “The Cartel” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity and the Lake County Tea Party. This documentary was shown in many locations across the nation last week as part of National School Choice Week. Although the film focused on the New Jersey school system, it is indicative of the failures of the public education cartel found in every state.

While every independent study has shown that free market competition in education has forced improvement in the public schools, opponents of education reforms, such as vouchers and charter schools, exploit our fears by stating that such programs hurt the students “left behind” in the public schools.

One scene in The Cartel really stood out to me. They showed a charter school lottery to select students for the upcoming school year. The selected kids and their parents were celebrating as if they had won the Illinois state lottery, while those not selected were left sobbing.

How can anyone think it is better to trap kids in failing schools in order to protect public school cartels, where overpaid administrators and many ineffective tenured teachers continue to drain the financial resources? School choice is certainly not the only option, but for the sake of us kids, it’s time that voters demand that their elected officials consider it as a potential solution.

Victoria Hartogh

Island Lake