Author Rob Henderson coined the powerful term “luxury beliefs” to describe certain altruistic beliefs held by upper-class elites that, when paired with public policy, actually severely damage lower classes. One such belief is opposition to school choice. It particularly harms vulnerable children, as my seven siblings and I experienced ourselves.
Our family spent time on welfare, accepted church pantry food, and used free health clinics. We lived in tents, including one in a Maryland campground where my mother gave birth to my older brother.
My father was an extremist — a Mormon offshoot cult leader. (He was excommunicated from the official Church of Latter-day Saints.) Due to his mental illness, we also lived in sheds, motor homes, and houses. His favorite overnight spot was the Walmart parking lot.
I attended 17 public schools in rural, suburban, and urban settings nationwide. Despite this educational instability, I persevered, eventually landing a full-tuition scholarship for a Harvard master’s degree and a Goldman Sachs job.
During my middle school years, I attended two very well-funded, predominantly black inner-city schools in Kansas City, Missouri. I was bullied for being white, and my black friends were bullied for befriending the white girl. Worst of all, I saw firsthand the perpetual violence, drug abuse, and shoddy education many black students endure. Students waited in long lines to walk through metal detectors each morning, suffered regular bomb scares, and were forbidden from wearing certain color schemes (blue pants/blue shirt for the “Crips” gang or red pants/red shirt for the “Bloods” gang) since they could trigger violence.
I was the odd girl out who didn’t speak Ebonics. Our Utah accent sounded so foreign that people thought our family was Irish. With time, I eventually acclimated to taunts from black classmates calling me “Snow White,” and fascinated by my hair, constantly asking to touch it.
The gym was our morning holding pen. Before school each day, while students lined up for metal detectors and bag searches, security ushered those vetted in until everyone finished. There was no gradual trickle of students into the classrooms — we were released simultaneously. Students frequently launched into scratching, screaming, hair-pulling, punching brawls. Usually, fights started with some accusation of disrespect or false judgment. Two or three per morning was normal. One morning, I witnessed more violence than at all of my previous seven schools combined.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you money is the panacea for public education. For two decades, Utah ranked dead last in lowest funding per student (Mormon-heavy Idaho finally claimed the title in 2021, leaving Utah second from bottom), yet it scored in the top 10 among all 50 states in student outcomes, according to the U.S. News & World Report.
Kansas City Public Schools, on the other hand, was legendary for its incompetence, despite huge per-capita student spending boosts. Even with generous taxpayer resources, they were so rotten that in 2000, KCPS became the first district in America to lose accreditation. My eighth-grade school, Kansas City Middle School of The Arts, shut down permanently in 2011. Just 12% of students achieved proficiency in math during the 2009-10 school year, far lower than the Missouri average of 53%, and 14% proficiency in reading/language arts, compared to the state average of 54%.
In sixth grade, I remember science classwork I’d seen in maybe second or third grade. We spent almost as much time dealing with students yelling at teachers or getting in fights as we did actually learning. Classmates threw chairs at teachers, who kept security officers on speed dial. After nearly two years, our family returned to suburban schools, which were safer and more academically rigorous.
My harrowing KCPS experience taught me that accountability is essential in the education system. And from a racial justice standpoint, it showed me how children in majority-black environments suffer neglect in systems created and maintained primarily by “progressive” bureaucrats and politicians who claim the needs of black children top their priority list. Fueled by campaign donations from teachers unions, Democrats pay lip service to racial justice while trapping black children in failing public schools.
Sadly, Kansas City is far from alone in its education stranglehold. Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco are also toxic standouts. And yet public teachers’ unions continue to scramble nationwide to stop the flow of taxpayer dollars to more worthy educators at public charter and private schools.
A USA Today op-ed published last month by two Democratic governors illustrates this luxury belief. In it, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper demonized using taxpayer money for school scholarship accounts, which enable low-income families, predominantly black and brown, to attend excellent private schools. Here’s the gut punch: the children of both governors attend private schools.
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This is Marie Antoinette-level hypocrisy. Poor families dither, languishing on mile-long waiting lists for vouchers, charter schools, and other escape routes, while these officials’ children are afforded every possible opportunity to succeed.
But there is still hope that school choice will soon become the norm. Recently, both of Alabama’s legislative chambers embraced a $7,000 education scholarship bill, which Gov. Kay Ivey signed. Alabama is the latest in over the last several years. Educational freedom is also brewing in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi. These states can take heart knowing they’re on the right side of history by fighting harmful—even physically dangerous—luxury beliefs.
Carrie Sheffield is the author of Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness (Center Street, March 12). Follow: @carriesheffield.
