Andy Smarick writes,

Today, almost 60 state-level government programs enable students to attend private schools, and approximately three million students enroll in about 7,000 charter schools in more than 40 states.16 In 17 cities, at least 30 percent of public school students are now enrolled in charters. The continuous growth of these programs and participating students shows no signs of abating; for instance, national enrollment in charter schools has grown by about 10 percent annually for the past decade, and student participation in private school choice programs doubled between 2011 and 2016.

As a historical matter, in the existing paradigm’s early days, especially in rural areas, some districts had only one school. So initially the district-based approach was not especially associated with technocratic thinking, a powerful central office, residence-based student assignment, and so on. But over the course of the 20th century, as America’s student population expanded and migrated and as the benefits of economies of scale became attractive, districts grew in size. Today, the average district has seven schools, but even that masks the hundreds of districts (including county-based districts in the South and urban districts nationwide) that have grown gargantuan—some with hundreds of schools and hundreds of thousands of students.

This is an interesting point. I think that a big weakness of the modern version of state-run schools is its centralization and bureaucracy. The Department of Education, especially under Democrats, reinforces the way in which power is taken away from parents, classroom teachers, and school principals.

In many private industries, firms have discovered that they cannot dictate to consumers. They have to empower employees to serve consumers. Back when school districts were small, they had to operate that way. Now they do not, and Smarick sees the trend toward choice expanding as a result.