Louisville is a wonderful city, and I’m proud to call it home, but like many other American cities, your child’s educational opportunities depend heavily on your income level. It doesn’t have to be this way: charter schools and scholarship tax credit programs are two policy mechanisms that can help level the educational playing field.
My op-ed out today in the Louisville Courier-Journal focuses on the need for Kentucky’s policymakers to empower lower-income parents with the ability to choose the best school for their child — just like the wealthy already do:

All families deserve to choose the best educational path for their children, but right now in Louisville, that right is reserved only for the wealthy.

Families with financial means who are unhappy with Jefferson County Public Schools have several options. They can move to nearby Oldham, Shelby or Bullitt counties, as thousands have done since the early 1990s, taking a significant amount of taxable wealth with them. Or they can enroll their children in one of the area’s many private schools, as thousands per year also do. Low-income families, meanwhile, are essentially asked to wait and hope that the school system improves.

Read my full op-ed here, and check out Bellwether’s other writing on school choice issues here.