This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 24, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Last year was heralded among the best, if not the best year for school choice ever,

but this year is shaping up to be very different where

culture war fights state-level curriculum mandates and other legislative edicts

have taken center stage meanwhile educational freedom in the broadest sense hasn't.

Chris Stewart is CEO of the Bright Beam Network. He says the culture war fights

aren't good for school choice and one side is clearly winning.

Right now a lot of states are having their legislative sessions and as we hopefully are closing out this pandemic, COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of parents have been

witnessed to their children attending school virtually.

They've been more engaged in the process because it has been more important,

more essential for them to be engaged in the process, not just for schools being closed, but also a lot easier for parents to observe young people being educated.

And so a lot of states have adopted some pretty dramatic school choice measures.

One of the complaints that I hear from the people who are defenders of the status quo or defenders of public schools will say,

hey look school choice may be fine for the kids who leave but for the kids who remain

in public schools or traditional public schools, they may be at a disadvantage.

One because their classmates have departed who may have been contributing a lot to the classroom, but also because the kids who left, that's a self-selecting group.

And so in addition to resources being drained from public schools, siphon is the word that I hear used

most often in that regard, you get an

inaccurate picture of the performance of an educational institution because of that.

And what do you think of that?

I've definitely heard the narrative. I mean this is the self-protection narrative of the traditional public schools who don't want any of the per-people income leaving the traditional schools to go to another body, so they have to form a narrative that helps them

...