What do a failing school, a recently passed law granting parents greater authority in demanding change from underperforming schools, and a petition signed by a majority of parents seeking to start a new charter school in response to the failing public school have in common? All of that still isn’t enough to stop a local government from preventing parents from having the power of choice. California’s Anaheim Elementary School District sought to throw out a petition signed by parents attempting to convert a failing school into a charter school. Fortunately, an appellate court rejected the school district’s request and the battle will continue.

While it may be easy to see the teachers union’s fingerprints all over this attempt to prevent choice, the larger issue is that of statist control. As Vladimir Lenin famously stated, “Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Leftists do not believe in school choice because they know that doing so would lead to a diversity of training and ideas. Such actual diversity would then yield a wide range of thought and decisions, especially regarding society and more specifically politics.

For leftists, school is about indoctrination over education. Opening up the public school system to competition — greater opportunities for students to learn and for parents to gain the choice of where their child attends — poses a significant threat to the leftist education complex. And that’s just not acceptable.