"Freedom of Choice"

Fifty years ago the U.S. Supreme Court labeled so-called “freedom of choice” school desegregation plans as inadequate. One of the test cases, Raney v. Board of Education, originated in Gould, Arkansas. “Freedom of choice” theoretically allowed all students to choose which school to attend. In practice, the school choice agenda meant that whites got to choose to go to white schools while blacks were more often than not denied that choice on the grounds that white schools were full. For blacks, it turned out that school choice was in fact no choice at all. Arkansas’s school choice laws that operate today very closely resemble those previously discredited in the courts and appear to be having the exactly the same outcomes—recreating the bad old days of segregated schools.