14 August 2024

The decline of the US public school

The latest instalment of BBC Radio Four’s Crossing Continents series explores the rejection of public education in Arizona.

By Megan Kenyon

Photo by Megan Jelinger / AFP via Getty Images

Arizona is a microcosm of wider shifts in the US education system. The epicentre of the so-called parents’ revolution can be found in the state, which has been the first in the country to roll out universal access to empowerment scholarship vouchers (ESAs). These tax-funded vouchers give parents funding that can be used either to homeschool their children or go towards a place in a private school. This has coincided with a sharp rise in the popularity of homeschooling, reportedly the fastest-growing form of education in the US.

This new instalment of BBC Radio Four’s Crossing Continents explores the rejection of public education in Arizona. Its presenter Alex Last travels to the state to meet parents making use of ESA vouchers, as well as teachers from both the public and private sector. He speaks to parents from across the political and social spectrum and unpacks the various reasons why ESA vouchers are rising in popularity.

Last discovers why so many Christian parents use the scheme to keep their children out of state schools. Meisha, a mother of five who uses ESAs to homeschool her children, says she has never enrolled them into the public education system. “You don’t get to pick and choose what they teach in schools… I want my children learning my belief system.”

In a moving interview, Last speaks with a mother named Pamela who has found it incredibly difficult to use ESA vouchers to place her disabled son, James, in a school that suits his needs. In an exposing moment, she says: “It’s been so bad what’s available in the private sector… I think I’ll have to try [the public sector] and hope that it can’t be any worse.”

This is a compelling listen which combines on-the-ground reporting with wider analysis of what these changes mean for American schools – and why the future of the US education system is in flux.