Voters Elect School Choice Governors in NJ, VA

Advocates for School Choice, a national advocacy organization promoting education reform, said that Christie and McDonnell can seize the opportunity to work in bipartisan fashion with pro-reform Democrats to deliver on their pledges to bring real reforms to Trenton and Richmond and to their respective states’ education systems.

In New Jersey, Christie campaigned on a platform that included expanding access to charter schools, vouchers, and a corporate scholarship tax credit program that would allow low-income students to go to the private schools of their parents’ choice. At his first post-election news conference yesterday—held at a charter school in Newark—Christie said that New Jersey’s failing urban schools are “an obscenity” and that he will push hard against the forces of the status quo that seek to deny school choice options to parents of low-income families. Numerous New Jersey Democrats—including State Senator Ray Lesniak—have been promoting a scholarship tax credit program for more than two years. Christie’s election was a stinging defeat for New Jersey’s teachers unions, which spent massive sums of money in support of the ousted incumbent governor, who opposed school choice.

In Virginia, McDonnell—who has supported scholarship tax credits in the past—campaigned on reforming Virginia’s antiquated, worst-in-the-nation charter school law, which allows only for local school boards to authorize the creation of charters. In Virginia, even Democratic House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong has voted in favor of school choice bills in the past, but reforms have encountered resistance from Northern Virginia Democrats. Yet the strong support for charter schools from the Obama Administration gives McDonnell a genuine opportunity to build a bipartisan coalition for expansion.

“The fact that school choice and education reform were prominent features of both gubernatorial campaigns is promising,” said Greg Brock, executive director of Advocates for School Choice. “We are optimistic that Governors-Elect Christie and McDonnell will deliver on their pledges to reform schools. Now is the time to give disadvantaged children in New Jersey and Virginia real options and a real chance for a quality education.”

Advocates for School Choice
Andrew Campanella, Senior Communications Advisor
202-276-1303
andrew@ccgstrategies.com