High school football in Louisiana delivers an argument for school choice

NOTE: If I seem a little erratic in this post, it’s because while I was writing it, news broke about Ben Affleck being cast as Batman and I just don’t know if I can handle this.

Early this year, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s member schools held a controversial vote on whether to split select (private and charter schools, essentially) and non-select (public schools) into separate football playoffs. The reason behind this was the public school system noting how frequently private schools (mostly Catholic around here) were getting to and winning state championship games.

It came down to the fact that, unlike public schools, the select schools weren’t bound by school districting, meaning if you wanted to send your kid to one of these schools, you could. While recruiting is strictly forbidden by the LHSAA, it’s not hard to see why parents would choose to send their kids to those schools as opposed to the public ones.

Well, it is a widely held belief now that at the January meeting of the LHSAA (one year from the controversial vote), the private schools will announce they are splitting from the LHSAA. It would be absolute chaos at that point. The football playoff system is the only system affected by the vote, but it’s certainly enough to upset things a lot. And, with the private schools leaving, so would a lot of the money that goes toward the LHSAA.

But, this is a problem that could very well be fixed if school choice were allowed and the state’s money followed the kids to wherever they chose to go to school. Schools would be motivated to do better so they could attract better students and the private schools would lose that advantage. The playing field would be leveled and competition would be better than ever. Of course, that’s all a pipe dream so long as there are people to call school choice unfair, racist and unworkable.

Because those people are providing much better ideas, like keeping things the way they are.

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