Choice hurts rural schools: The teachers unions promote another easily debunked myth.

Corey DeAngelis:

This claim is nei­ther new nor per­sua­sive. De­mo­c­rat Joy Hofmeis­ter called school choice a “rural school killer” in her un­suc­cess­ful bid for Ok­la­homa gov­er­nor this No­vember. Texas De­mo­c­rat Beto O’Rourke like­wise failed in his at­tempt to cam­paign against Re­pub­li­can Gov. Greg Ab­bott’s sup­port for school choice. This week Iowa Sen­ate Mi­nor­ity Leader Zach Wahls re­sorted to the same tac­tic, call­ing school choice “an ex­is­ten­tial threat” to rural pub­lic schools.

These same politi­cians also claim that rural con­stituents wouldn’t ben­e­fit from school choice be­cause the lo­cal pub­lic school is their only op­tion. These ar­gu­ments can’t both be true. If rural fam­i­lies didn’t have any other op­tions, pub­lic schools wouldn’t suf­fer. And if rural pub­lic schools are as great as the teach­ers unions say they are, they would have no need to worry about a lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion.