Mary Gonzalez is a member of the Texas House of Representatives. She is now serving her third term in the House, and she is deeply concerned that the state and the federal government want to destroy public education.

The goal of school choice, she says, is to create a separate and unequal system of schools for the state’s 6 million students.

She writes:

In 2011, the Legislature cut $5.4 billion in public education funding and implemented a testing regime that centered accountability on a dehumanizing, ineffective standardized test.

In short, schools would get a lot less money while facing impossible standards. It was as if schools were intentionally being set up to be labelled as failures. Why do you think campuses are now being labeled A through F?

Creating the perception of failing public schools in the minds of the public was necessary to fuel the “school choice” movement.

Listening to the political rhetoric at the state and national level, this strategy seems to have been effective. Instead of a collective discourse on strengthening and funding our public schools, the conversation centers on supporting charter expansion and vouchers.

The expansion of “school choice” translates into the creation of multiple systems, facilitating a structure of separate and unequal.

Charter school quality, however, is questionable. Research demonstrates that, on average, they don’t outperform traditional public schools.

The real problem with “school choice” is the creation of an unequal, tiered system that allows students to fall through the cracks. These tiers are only created when money and resources are taken away from public schools.

In the long term, this approach is unsustainable for a state serving nearly 6 million students.

The unequal distribution of resources, along with the fact that charter schools do not operate under the same rules as public schools, exacerbates the problem.

Charters claim to be “public”, but are actually run by corporations or nonprofits, rather than locally elected school boards that are accountable to parents and the community.

Charters are not subject to the same regulations as public schools. Those regulations include class size limits, student-teacher ratios, and having school nurses and counselors on site.

Also, charters can control enrollment through admission requirements like geographical location, discipline records, sibling priority, academic ability, and through dismissal and expulsion procedures that differ from those of traditional schools. This allows charters to preferentially select students who are less-expensive to educate.

When we fragment the public school system, we create more opportunity for inequity without making any real gains.

Democracy requires a strong and equitable public school system. Choice will undermine that goal.