John Stossel Is Wrong—School Choice Doesn’t Compete, It Creeps

Like kudzu, government-funded education grows fast, smothers real alternatives, and is nearly impossible to root out.

This piece is my response to John Stossel’s latest article entitled simply School Choice.

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John Stossel and others who claim to want “free market solutions” to our education crisis, love to compare school choice to FedEx and UPS disrupting the government monopoly of the USPS. Too bad that analogy doesn’t hold up under even the smallest amount of scrutiny.

School choice isn’t private enterprise challenging government-run education—it’s government expanding its monopoly into thousands of new locations, each with the appearance of independence, but still beholden to the same standards, credentialing pipelines, and funding strings that bind public schools. It’s not FedEx; it’s more like government giving the USPS a shiny new fleet and then forcing FedEx to use it.

If you think this makes you freer think again.

The Straw Men Come Marching In

When I make arguments like the one above, rather than addressing what I’ve said, most people start conversations like this:
“So you’d rather everyone be stuck in the public system?”
That’s a straw man. Got anything better?
”It’s better than nothing!”
Is it? How is spreading government control to into a market where it has heretofore been prohibited good at all, never mind “better” than what we have?
”But it will force public schools to compete!”
Will it? Maybe your definition of “compete” is different from mine, but the only place I see competition heating up is at the ballot box.

Public Money Makes Every School a Battleground

We’ve seen it already: parents whose children can’t get into a private school, either because there isn’t enough space, or the school maintains admissions criteria that still make it more selective than a public school, force a debate about the “inequity” of redistributing public dollars to an institution that can’t or won’t take all comers. Other parents—perhaps those whose children still use the public system—will argue, or rather continue to argue, that public schools are being shortchanged. After all, currently vouchers and tax-credit-subsidized scholarships may be used at schools that do not accept or provide for students with disabilities. So in areas where a private, special needs school doesn’t exist, and private schools can’t or won’t provide IDEA-compliant services, parents may be inclined to argue their children are being unfairly discriminated against. Who knows? They might even find a lawyer, or a politician (or both) who will make the case that school choice must be addressed to prevent denial of the “free and fair public education” (FAPE) to which both federal and state law entitles them.

Just this past week, we have seen this argument begin to take shape. The House of Representatives passed a reconciliation bill, which includes a first-of-its-kind national school voucher program. It’s on its way to the Senate, but not without stirring up controversy. As NPR reports (and yes, it is important to pay attention to sources like NPR when you want to anticipate who will argue against free-market solutions to entrenched problems), “The proposal would use the federal tax code to offer vouchers that students could use to attend private secular or religious schools, even in states where voters have opposed such efforts.”

NPR’s piece continues with comments by opponents and supporters of this proposal, but for our purposes here, I want you to pay close attention to the opponents. Josh Cowen, a professor at Michigan State University makes the point that the plan is complex, and “about three times as generous as what you're gonna get from donating to a children's hospital or a veteran's group or any other cause…”

Additionally, “the reward for donors doesn't stop at the dollar-for-dollar tax credit. Instead of cash, they could donate stock. Normally, when you sell stock, you have to pay capital gains taxes on any profit you've made. But Davis says donors who give their stock to an SGO wouldn't have to pay capital gains taxes on any increase in the stock's value. And they would still get that tax credit.”

That’s why activists on all sides of the political spectrum are already calling this plan a “tax shelter for the wealthy.” ¹

The Bill Itself Plants the Seeds of Control

The language of the bill itself offers fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of government intrusion on both sides of the political aisle. As the NPR piece makes clear, private schools are not currently bound by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). They can turn away students they don’t want, or can’t serve. Yet the House bill contains language that hints at a new requirement that school choice subsidy/scholarship-recipient schools must accept IDEA-entitled students, and provide them with the services they need:

Elsewhere in the bill, there is language that prohibits any "government entity… to mandate, direct, or control any aspect of any private or religious elementary or secondary education institution."

There is nothing in this bill that makes clear who would enforce either the requirement for “equitable services” or the protection of private school independence. You don’t have to take my word for it; read the section of the bill yourself. Start on page 763.

Do you really want to gamble on future politicians voting to reduce the federal government’s power to determine when, to whom, by what bureaucratic process (at whatever that would cost), and for how much, your tax dollars can be used to fund private schools? Do you think they’ll make it easier to say “no” to government control?

Before you answer, remember right now, the federal government has limited control over public school funding and virtually no power over private or homeschooling funding. That’s reserved to the states. The federal government’s role is primarily to ensure state compliance with laws like IDEA—providing grants to help cover the costs.

But if this bill becomes law, it will represent the largest expansion of federal control over education since the creation of the Department of Education. And unlike other expansions, this one would reach into homes, private schools, and microschools that have long been beyond the reach of federal oversight.

More Money, Same System

If we truly want to reform education, the goal should be to shrink the government’s control, not spread it into homes, microschools, and private classrooms. Every new “choice” that comes with government money brings with it:

• The same credentialed teachers trained in state-run or accredited colleges of education

• The same “standards” dictated by state departments of education

• The same access requirements outlined in the state and federal constitutions (see IDEA, ESSA, and Titles I, IV and IX)

• The same testing mandates, the same data collection, the same bureaucracy

The more surface area we give this growth, the harder it will be to fight.

Every new school that accepts government funding becomes another node in the system—another place where regulations, standards, and oversight take root. What was once centralized and already a challenge in its original form becomes like kudzu—spreading everywhere, entangling everything, and immune to pruning. Instead of containing the problem, we will have multiplied its access points and shielded it politically behind the illusion of “choice.”

Whose “Choice” Is It Really? (Hint: Not the Parents)

Supporters of school choice love to claim that it empowers families, but in practice, the power often lies with the schools and the state, not the parents.

As Curtis Finch, superintendent of the Deer Valley Unified School District in Arizona, explains, many families are drawn in by the promise of specialized private schools for their children with disabilities. “The pattern that usually happens,” he says, “is a family hears that there's a special school for Johnny… so they end up getting this voucher, and then they take it over to that [private] school.” But more often than not, Finch adds, “We usually get those kids back.”²

Why? Because private schools accepting voucher funds are not required to accept—or keep—every student. They can turn students away for having learning challenges, behavioral issues, or academic struggles. Even those who are admitted can later be “pushed out” if the school decides the child is no longer a fit—financially, behaviorally, or academically.

This isn’t just speculation. As Josh Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, points out, “it's voucher schools, not parents, who get to choose.”³

And organizations like EdChoice defend this structure. Their vice president, Robert Enlow, justifies it bluntly: “Not every single school serves every single child, nor should it.”⁴ That may be true in a free market, but when taxpayer dollars are funding these selective institutions, it’s hard to argue the system is serving all families—or upholding real educational freedom.

What Government Funds, It Runs

This isn’t just a philosophical point—it’s a practical one. If taxpayer dollars are involved, there will be strings. Always.

You don’t want your tax dollars funding Madrassas? I don’t want mine funding Marxism or any religion at all. That’s why government and education should be kept at arm’s length from private institutions, especially those grounded in faith or conscience. That includes progressive dogma, conservative dogma, and everything in between.

Truly “free” markets don’t force taxpayers to fund every version of “education” someone dreams up. They also don’t force individual education choices into the public square, and subject to public vote.

We’ve Seen this Movie Before

Why do private colleges cost so much more now than they did before federal grants and student loans? Because subsidies inflate costs and weaken independence. The same will happen to private K–12 schools.

The “choice” crowd pretends you can take government money without government control. That’s a myth.

Already, entrepreneurs are launching “schools” just to access these new pots of public gold. Some are dreaming up ways to turn students into data, train AI tools, or build subscription models for taxpayer-subsidized content. Others see the system as a shortcut to public contracts they could never win otherwise.

Meanwhile, truly independent schools—the ones refusing subsidies—will face impossible competition. Take the money, or raise tuition. Either way, parents lose. And when that happens, what real choices are left?

Obamacare for Education

Let’s be honest: school choice programs replicate the worst parts of Obamacare.

1. There’s a mandate—you’re still paying for government-run education through taxes, even if you “opt out.” The mandate to buy insurance may have gone away, but the mandate to pay for other people’s healthcare has not, which in itself skews the healthcare market towards the government’s standards, as they are the largest payer.

2. There are centralized standards—schools must conform to state guidelines to receive funds just as doctors, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, and healthcare professional education institutions must meet government standards to receive repayment.

3. There’s market distortion—government subsidies, whether to parents, schools, or scholarship providers, inflate demand, prices, and regulation, perhaps even regulation to control those prices, which would distort the market even further.

Just like the “insurance exchanges” in health care, school choice creates an illusion of freedom, while reshaping the entire market around the government’s definition of acceptable service. The private sector then adapts—not to serve families better, but to serve the system.

A Real Free Market Reform Would End the Monopoly

John Stossel used to champion actual liberty: tax reform, voluntary markets, and parental control. What happened?

Public money doesn’t free us from the system—it ties us more tightly to it. Every dollar accepted comes with expectations, oversight, and alignment with government priorities. What looks like freedom of choice is often just a new form of compliance, dressed in private clothing. The more we accept, the more we’re absorbed into the very system we hoped to escape.

School choice isn't liberation. It's co-optation. And if we don't wake up soon, the last truly independent schools will be pushed out, priced out, or bought out.

Postscript: A Message to Free Marketeers

It is insane to me that we are still bound to a system designed by people long dead — people like John D. Rockefeller, who, through his establishment of the General Education Board in 1903, aimed to standardize education across the United States for their own purposes, which—as you can see below— did not include preserving, protecting, or defending, our individual liberty.

“In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”⁵

If you believe in markets, then trust them. Stop asking government to help you build them. Subsidies don’t make markets freer—they make them fake. Let parents build their own communities. Let schools compete on their own terms. And let taxpayers finally stop paying for a system we didn’t ask for.

1. NPR. Trump’s Federal Voucher Plan Raises Old Concerns. May 23, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/nx-s1-5397175/trump-federal-voucher-private-school

2. Ibid

3. Ibid

4. Ibid

5. John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education. Available at: https://ia601308.us.archive.org/24/items/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_758/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation.pdf

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