RALEIGH – Brian Lewis used to fight school vouchers. He was the chief lobbyist for the North Carolina Association of Educators, the state teachers union. Vouchers threaten teachers unions’ power by diffusing children and education authority more broadly among parents and schools.

Everywhere voucher programs come to life, teachers unions try to kill them.

But then Lewis’s daughter entered middle school, and public school stopped working for her. Lewis and his wife tried to work within the system, meeting with teachers and administrators and getting testing accommodations. “Still, Isabel was slipping away,” Lewis wrote in the News & Observer this week. “She dreaded school, we dreaded school, and it was clear the teachers dreaded it, too. We hit the wall in November and came to the conclusion that public middle school was not the answer. In fact, it was the problem.”

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The Lewis family enrolled Isabel in a private school with tiny class sizes. Her father writes she has regained her joy, and so have her parents. His op-ed continues:

This experience is not only about my daughter’s education. It has become my education. I can afford this option for my daughter, but what about the thousands of families, unlike me, who cannot afford tuition to send their child to a private school? Don’t their daughters’ struggles count, too?

SOURCE: Raleigh News & Observer

Authored by Joy Pullmann
Originally published here

Published with permission