Kerby Anderson
The number of states that now provide school choice is increasing. According to a recent report, 32 states (plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico) are using school choice. That means that approximately 20 million students are now eligible for a private choice program.
Larry Sand is the president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. While he is excited about the progress of school choice in this nation, he is also concerned about the attacks against school choice by teachers’ unions and the educational establishment. For example, one group maintains that “voucher programs are deeply rooted in segregation, racism, and discrimination.”
He says that on race, the critics have it exactly backward. “Almost 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, public schools are still segregated.” Sixty percent of black and hispanic public school students attend schools where three-fourths are students of color. By contrast, virtually all the empirical studies on school choice programs found they reduced segregation.
There is still much segregation in the public schools because students are forced to attend schools according to their zip code. Since most residential areas are not integrated, the schools remain segregated. It’s no wonder the parents of all races are unhappy with zip-code-mandated schooling.
That is why school choice has become so popular in America. A recent poll found that two-thirds of Democrats (66%) and Independents (69%) favor school choice. An even larger percentage of Republicans (80%) favor it.
School choice is also taxpayer friendly. According to the latest figures, K-12 public schools spend an average of $14,347 per pupil. The nation’s private K-12 schools spend $12,350.
For these reasons, more states are likely to enact school choice.

Kerby Anderson
The number one issue for voters this year is immigration. To be precise, the real issue is the lack of border security.
This is not only perception but reality. Perhaps you have seen the chart that compares the illegal immigrant encounters for Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden. The blue bar for the second term of Barack Obama lists 5 million encounters. The green bar for Donald Trump lists 4.7 million encounters. And the red bar for Joe Biden lists 8.4 million so far, with an estimate of 12 million by the end of his term.
If every person encountered at the border and let into the country was a law-abiding migrant, the sheer numbers pose a problem. Just ask the mayors of many of the large cities in America. Unfortunately, not every person crossing the border is someone we would want to live in this country.
Each year Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests nearly 2,000 illegal aliens who have murdered Americans. Last year, ICE caught 1,323 illegals with homicide convictions along with 390 with pending homicide convictions. That works out to nearly five murders a day.
Of course, these are the ones who were caught. Millions have crossed the border and ICE estimates that there were at least 1.7 million “gotaways” who escaped federal custody. We can assume some of them are involved in drugs and human trafficking. A few might even be terrorists, who deliberately avoided capture.
As I mentioned in a previous commentary, we also have nearly 75,000 “special interest aliens.” These are individuals who have traveled to countries known for terrorist activity and should be given further scrutiny.
Americans are convinced that border security is a problem. These numbers illustrate that the problem is even worse than you know.