 The COVID-19 lockdowns have upended no part of our lives more than K-12 education, with virtually no public schools open for business with full-time, in-person instruction. The result is pandemonium for students, parents, and educators alike who are scrambling to make sense of school systems that are no longer capable of fulfilling their missions. The one constant? Critiques of school choice, especially by wealthy, well-connected liberals and progressives. Private and charter schools can be especially problematic because some states have virtually no oversight for them. As a matter of fact, Samantha Bee is wrong about charter schools, which are publicly funded and always overseen by either state or local education officials. She's joined in her contempt for charters by Joe Biden, who came out swinging in an interview with the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. A lot of these charter schools are significantly underperforming, significantly. And it's not even clear that school choice leads to a better education. The latest meta-analysis that I've seen on the evidence for charter schools is by Julian Betts and Emily Tang, and they found that overall, looking at the most rigorous evidence, looking at random assignment gold standard evaluations and other evaluations that try to make it as apples to apples as possible when looking at these comparisons, they conclude that there's about a two to three percent standard deviation increase in academic outcomes. Cory DeAngelis is the director of school choice for the Reason Foundation and co-editor of the new collection, School Choice Myths, setting the record straight on education reform. DeAngelis, who holds a PhD in education from University of Arkansas, says widespread dissatisfaction with online education is massively increasing interest in school choice. The school system has gotten so bad that families are figuring out that there's no good reason to fund institutions when you can fund students directly instead. People are re-envisioning the factory model of schooling itself because a lot of people are getting a taste of homeschooling. Another thing that people are re-envisioning is how we finance education. So many of the schools aren't even opening, the system's still getting your child's education dollars even though they're not reopening. Whereas if you're a family on food stamps and your neighborhood grocery store doesn't reopen, they don't get to keep your food stamps, families are turning towards the idea that the funding should follow the student to wherever they're getting an education. DeAngelis points to a poll showing that 17 percent of parents who have disenrolled their children from traditional public schools this fall wouldn't go back even if the schools reopened for in-person instruction and that charter school operators in states such as South Carolina are expecting a 40 percent increase in the size of their student bodies in the coming year. If the charter schools aren't accountable to families, why are 3.2 million families choosing charter schools each and every year? Families can take their children elsewhere if the charter schools aren't doing a good job. DeAngelis points to a recent study of low-income minority students in Boston who attended charters. They found pretty large increases in 10th grade academic proficiencies on their state exam and then also higher enrollments in college as well. The findings were overall positive for students with special needs that won a lottery to attend a charter and then also students that were identified as English language learner students. DeAngelis says there's no turning back when it comes to school choice. If your grocery store doesn't reopen you can take your money elsewhere. If your child's school doesn't reopen you should similarly be able to take their children's education dollars elsewhere. When you look at all of these other taxpayer funded initiatives that the funding follows the person it doesn't go to the institution regardless of how well it meets your needs. I think more people are seeing this issue with how we finance K-12 education.