In 2023, Governor Kim Reynolds signed the Students First Act into law. In function, this law created access to public funds for families to send their children to accredited private schools. The 2025–26 school year marks the first year that all families, regardless of income, are eligible to apply for an award.
While the public has become increasingly familiar with the pros and cons of such programs—often referred to as “school voucher” programs—due to the vibrant cultural debate over the issue of “school choice” being driven by politicians and advocacy groups around the country, the history of public money being allocated for private education is often lost entirely in the heat of the argument.
Enter Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Cara Fitzpatrick and her 2023 book, The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America.
While the text opens with an introduction that feels charged with the author’s own perspective and values, the bulk of the book reads similarly to a textbook aimed towards academic audiences. Fitzpatrick takes the reader through a blow-by-blow history of the school choice movement and the different types of programs that have existed all over the country with the intention of giving students an alternative to traditional public school.
That said, while the book reads like an academic text, it remains accessible to audiences new to the topic and perhaps new to dissecting the aftermath of major judicial decisions. Pulling that off—creating a serious text that can serve both the academic and broader nonfiction reader—is no easy feat and something for which Fitzpatrick deserves credit. In other words, what could come off as intimidating instead reads like an invitation for all—regardless of their predisposition toward the topic—to take a serious look at the school choice debate and understand how we got where we are before we begin to look at where we will go next.
What makes the text work, what makes it compelling and interesting, is Fitzpatrick’s commitment to dissecting the broader cultural systems at play in the history of school choice. She doesn’t pull any punches—the reader is forced to confront the ways in which systemic racism, classism, religious influence and discrimination, and economic commitments to fostering competition are all inherent in the roots of the school choice programs that exist today.
The only way in which the book falls flat in the big picture, however, is its lack of a serious look at the ways in which school voucher programs (and similar education reforms) leave disabled students out to dry. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) only provides protection to students who are attending public schools. When a parent decides to remove their child from a public school in favor of a private school, IDEA no longer protects them. That could mean the loss of their Individual Education Plan, physical access barriers, and more. All of which assumes, of course, that the private school the parents want their disabled child to attend accepts them at all—something private schools are not mandated to do.
Fitzpatrick’s choice not to dive into the issues of disability rights and justice that sit so close to the core of the school choice debate is off-putting. It’s a lost opportunity to explore the realities of intersectional violence that the nation’s most vulnerable students often face in light of school choice reforms.
Nevertheless, The Death of Public School feels like essential reading for those who are aiming to understand, participate in, and influence the school choice debate in their own communities.