A brand-new report just landed on Governor Jeff Landry’s desk in Louisiana, and we need to talk about it — because the numbers are so good that the teachers unions are going to pretend this story doesn’t exist. Louisiana’s GATOR Scholarship Program, which lets parents use state funds to send their kids to the school of their choice instead of whatever failing government building they got assigned to by zip code, just posted results that would make any honest educator weep with joy.
The dishonest ones are just weeping.
Here are the numbers. Public schools in Louisiana graduate about 80% of their students. The GATOR program schools? Try 97.5%. That’s not a typo. Ninety-seven-point-five percent. In schools that sit in some of the highest-crime neighborhoods in the state.
But wait — it gets better.
More than 81% of GATOR students went on to enroll in college, compared to 62% of kids stuck in the public system. Chronic absenteeism — the fancy term for “kids who stopped showing up because the school is a disaster” — dropped from 20.8% in public schools to 6.3% in GATOR schools. Bullying and suspensions fell by 95%.
Ninety-five percent fewer suspensions. In high-crime neighborhoods. Someone should probably forward this to every Democrat who’s ever stood at a podium and told black families that school choice is “destroying public education.”
You know what’s actually destroying public education? Public education.
The GATOR program — which stands for “Giving All True Opportunity to Rise,” because Louisiana knows how to name things — launched in 2025 after Governor Landry signed universal school choice into law, making Louisiana the 11th state to do it. The program gives families scholarships averaging $7,220 per student to attend the private school of their choice. For context, the state spends $9,568 per kid in public schools.
Read that again. The state is spending LESS money per student on the program that produces a 97.5% graduation rate than it spends on the system that produces an 80% graduation rate. The GATOR kids are outperforming at a lower cost. In the same neighborhoods. With the same families.
(Somewhere, a teachers union lobbyist just threw their laptop across the room.)
The study surveyed 105 families and 190 private schools participating in the program, and the results weren’t even close. The private schools — many of which operate in the exact same high-crime zip codes as the failing public schools next door — had smaller class sizes, more counselors focused on college and career prep, and more advanced coursework offerings. In other words, they did what schools are supposed to do: teach kids.
Revolutionary concept, we know.
Governor Landry looked at these numbers and said what any sane person would say — he wants to double the program’s funding. There are tens of thousands of families on the waiting list right now. Tens of thousands of parents who looked at the public school down the street and said, “No thanks, I’d like my kid to actually graduate and go to college.” And right now, they’re stuck waiting because the program isn’t big enough yet.
This is the part that should make you angry. Not at Landry — he’s doing the right thing. Be angry at every politician, every union boss, and every education bureaucrat who spent decades telling parents they had no choice. Who told poor families in Baton Rouge and New Orleans and Shreveport that the crumbling school with the metal detectors and the 80% graduation rate was the best they could hope for. Who fought school choice tooth and nail while sending their own kids to private academies.
We see you.
The Left’s argument against school choice has always been the same recycled garbage: “It takes money away from public schools!” Yeah, it takes money away from public schools — and gives it directly to parents who use it to send their kids to schools that actually work. The money follows the child. That’s not a bug. That’s the entire point.
And now we have the receipts. A 97.5% graduation rate. An 81% college enrollment rate. A 95% reduction in bullying and suspensions. All at a lower cost per student. In high-crime areas.
Every single argument the teachers unions ever made against school choice just got demolished by a stack of data out of Louisiana.
Governor Landry turned Louisiana into a laboratory for what happens when you trust parents instead of bureaucrats. Turns out, parents make better decisions for their kids than government administrators who’ve never met them. Who could have possibly predicted that?
Oh, right. We did. For about thirty years.
Double the funding, Governor. Triple it. Every kid on that waiting list deserves the same shot. And every union boss who fought to keep them trapped in a failing system deserves to explain — to those families, face to face — why their paycheck was more important than a child’s future.
We already know the answer. They just don’t want to say it out loud.