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Oklahoma has embraced the national revolution of educational choice—it’s one of 30 states with private school choice programs. As the state has now moved to embrace the best kind of school choice, Education Savings Accounts, government unions and their allies have howled all the louder that choice is awful. But if that’s so, why do they have to keep running away from the facts? What are they afraid of?

When the Board of Education that governs Oklahoma City Public Schools recently voted to sever ties with Superintendent Rob Neu, there was much media speculation about why. After all, the board had welcomed Neu less than two years earlier and voted to pay him $240,000, plus a hefty $65,000 in benefits. It’s an understatement to say that Neu’s tenure has been filled with turmoil. For example, Neu hastily led the district in revamping its student disciplinary system. Neu gleefully reported that student suspensions were down. Unfortunately, a survey of district teachers showed that classroom chaos was up.

Want to hurt kids? Put state bureaucrats in charge of evaluating the schools in school choice programs.

We hear a lot of talk these days about popular anger at elites. This rage has surprised not a few of our leaders. They, including the members of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, were especially shocked by the popular revulsion at the Court’s Ten Commandments decision. We witnessed a genuine “pitchfork” moment, where ordinary people are outraged by policies imposed on them by elites and moved to loudly say so.

There are a number of good reasons to support creation of an Education Savings Account program that provides Oklahoma parents a portion of their child’s per-pupil allocation for education to use for public or private school tuition and other services. But one of the best reasons is that no one school can meet the needs of all children who live in the local area, regardless of the best efforts of those who work in that school.

In the Tulsa World this last weekend, OCPA’s Brandon Dutcher wrote about the fiscal impacts of educational choice programs, pointing to the cost savings happening for choice programs at the higher-ed level.

University of Oklahoma President David Boren is promoting a sales tax increase to finance a $5,000 pay raise for all teachers and $125 million for higher education.

One of the oldest puzzles in the school choice movement is why religious communities and leaders aren’t more interested in school choice. The government school monopoly promotes a stereotype that school choice is promoted by religious fanatics, but in fact religious leaders have been underrepresented in the school choice coalition. The most likely reason is a fear of compromising the independence of religious schools—but experience doesn’t support those fears, and I hope the time has come to get past them.

Thus far, lawmakers have failed to significantly expand educational options, especially for the most vulnerable. Recently legislative leaders announced that for now, no vote would occur by the full House or Senate to implement education savings accounts.