From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowaf.

This is the Daily.

Across the country, public schools are facing massive declines in enrollment,

while the movement to use public funds for private education grows.

Today, my colleague Dana Goldstein explains why so many parents are using taxpayer money

to privately educate their children,

and how their choices will transform the future of American education.

It's Wednesday, August 20th.

Dana, you're a longtime education reporter here at the Times.

You have become a reference point, I think, for a lot of people, on what is happening with schooling in the United States. And you've been covering what's been described as a sea change in the way America approaches K through 12 education.

So tell me about that change. For the longest time, the debate among policymakers was about

improving public schools. How can policymakers help public schools do a better job? Do better academically for kids, do better socially for kids.

But over the past few years, I've been looking at one of the biggest shifts I've observed in almost 20 years as an education reporter.

And that is because a big idea has gotten more energy than ever before.

And that is that instead of putting all of our

efforts into making public schools better, we should be spending more money on giving parents

more opportunities to basically escape public schools to put their kids in homeschooling or

private education. And what does that look like on a policy level? Well, basically, it looks like some

form of a private school voucher, some way that parents can spend taxpayer dollars to send

their kids to private school or to homeschool them. And over the past five years, we have

doubled the number of students using some form of a private school voucher, and now more than

one million American kids are using public dollars for some form of private education. And this is

...