In one Iowa city, public schools compete in the free market. Are students better off?

Summary

Up First – In One Iowa City, Public Schools Compete in the Free Market: Are Students Better Off?

Air Date: April 19, 2026
Host: Ayesha Rascoe
Guest/Reporter: Cory Turner, NPR Education Correspondent

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Episode Overview

This episode of NPR's Up First Sunday Story explores the implications of increased school choice in Cedar Rapids, Iowa—a city at the epicenter of the school choice movement—including public, charter, and private school options. Reporter Cory Turner investigates how the introduction of generous state-funded private school savings accounts and an expanding charter school scene is impacting students, families, and the traditional public school system. Through on-the-ground reporting and personal stories, the episode examines the intended and unintended consequences of creating a "free market" for education.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining School Choice and Iowa's Landscape

[01:06–02:24]

• School choice covers a wide spectrum:
  • Public School Choice: Magnet/open enrollment programs.
  • Charter Schools: Independently run but public, with more autonomy.
  • Private School Choice: Public dollars to help families pay private (even religious) school tuition, through vouchers or ESAs (Education Savings Accounts).
• Iowa's Model:
  • One of the most generous ESA programs in the country.
  • Starting this year, any child in Iowa is offered $8,000/year to spend on private school tuition.

2. The Push for Competition

[02:27–03:00]

• Governor Kim Reynolds and Iowa Republicans have championed funding “students, not systems” to create competition in education, with the goal of pressuring public schools to improve.
• Quote (Governor’s Vision):

  “In Iowa, we fund students, not systems.”
  — Republican Governor Kim Reynolds (via commercial clip) [02:36]

3. The Strains on Public Schools

[04:27–07:11]

• Cedar Rapids Community School District:
  • Serving 14,000 kids; experiencing financial hardship as students (and funding) leave for charter and private schools.
  • District is considering closing up to six elementary schools.
• Community Response:
  • Angry and emotional reactions from parents at board meetings.
  • Schools are aging, not ADA-compliant, lacking funds for needed upgrades.
• Quote:

  “But we make it work.”
  — Principal Kondra Allred, Cleveland Elem. [06:11, 06:28]

4. Charter Schools: Cedar Rapids Prep

[07:13–16:47]

• Cedar Rapids Prep:
  • New public charter middle school, led by principal Justin Blitz (later fired due to unrelated personal misconduct).
  • Attracts families with innovative facilities (e.g., a cafeteria slide, state-of-the-art labs).
  • Funded largely by billionaire philanthropist Joe Ricketts, providing a resource edge over traditional public schools.
  • Enrollment: About 230 kids came from the district—each departing student represents over $8,000 in lost state/local funding for the public system.
• Community Friction:
  • Some view the charter as “ruining public education” by drawing students and funds away.
  • Quote:

    “I've received, you know, anonymous mail saying, you know, I hope you're glad you're ruining public education.”
    — Justin Blitz [09:43]

• Why families leave:
  • Concerns about behavior and safety in public schools; difficulty meeting kids’ special needs.
  • Data showed 4,000 incidents resulting in suspensions/expulsions for 14,000 students last year.
  • Some parents struggled with the decision, feeling political discomfort but prioritizing their children's immediate needs.
  • Quote:

    “I believe in the greater good, but my kids have to come first for me... Greater good has to come second.”
    — Adam Kvera, charter parent [12:41]

5. Private School Choice: Xavier Catholic Schools

[17:38–24:29]

• Xavier Catholic School System:
  • Large, well-resourced, emphasizing both faith and academic excellence.
  • Tuition: $9–10k/year, with non-Catholic students paying more.
  • The new ESA program makes private education accessible to families who couldn’t afford it before.
  • Impact:
    • Now, 98% of families at Xavier use the ESA.
    • More than half of Iowa's ESA recipients were already in private schools.
    • Cost: Over $300 million/year to the state.
    • Charitable support and tuition still underpin school finances.
  • Quote (On ESAs):

    “We should not be using tax dollars to subsidize behavior that would exist without it...we are literally wasting money when we give it to people to do a thing that they would be doing anyways.”
    — Rob Sand, Iowa State Auditor [21:04]

  • Socioeconomic Skew:
    • Only 13% of Xavier’s students are low-income compared to 57% in public schools.
    • School admits it cannot serve all, especially those with special needs.
    • Quote:

      “Oftentimes, for us, what it comes down to is, can we serve your child adequately? And sometimes, unfortunately, the answer is no.”
      — Chris McCarvel, Xavier Schools President [23:55]

6. Who Gets Left Behind? The Uneven Effects

[24:29–29:56]

• Public schools (like Cleveland Elementary) increasingly serve a higher share of students with disabilities and from low-income families.
• Staff at public schools express pride but also exhaustion balancing shrinking resources with growing needs (including integrating children pushed out from other choice schools).
• Parental “choice” is often available only to those with resources and knowledge to navigate the system; others (including grandparents raising kids) may be left behind.
• Quote (Teacher perspective):

  “It's getting harder to... Harder to teach in public education... Because someone needs to love and care for these kids that nobody cares about.”
  — Principal Kondra Allred [30:25]

7. Race, Demographics, and Community Impact

[29:18–31:00]

• Gentrification concerns: As more affluent/white families leave, district's proportion of white students drops, while those of disabled and low-income rise.
• School closures threaten community cohesion; schools are seen as “backbones” of neighborhoods.
• Some families—out of commitment or necessity—remain loyal to their local public schools.
• Quote:

  “I just think schools are the backbone of a community... I just fear what might happen to the community as a whole.”
  — Antoine Jones, parent, and paraeducator [28:23]

8. Big Picture and Takeaways

[31:00–32:38]

• School choice has brought positive change for some individual families.
• The movement introduces “free market” logic into education—which may neglect children who are most vulnerable or difficult to serve.
• Public schools remain essential for the “common good.” The lasting dilemma: how to provide true equality of educational opportunity, not just the appearance of choice.
• Quote (Final reflection):

  “Our loose local networks of free public schools grew imperfectly out of that value to serve the common good. Now, it is possible that some version of school choice can also serve the common good. But I think it is really important when politicians and communities ask themselves, is this working, that they're not leaving the most vulnerable children behind?”
  — Cory Turner [32:10]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Parent frustration at public school closures:

  “Have you thought about the cost of it, the emotional and mental impact it's going to have on our children, on the teachers jobs that you are costing some of the best teachers I have ever seen in my damn life.”
  — Kaylee Marlow, parent [04:59]

• Charter school ‘slide’ moment:

  “Guess what? You can take a slide from class to lunch every day, they were sold.”
  — Justin Blitz, Cedar Rapids Prep [08:50]

• On why parents leave public schools:

  “They were just trying to, like, control the students, which didn’t really ever work out because they just end up arguing with them...”
  — Erica Kvera, student [11:33]

• Pointed critique of ESA program:

  “We should not be using tax dollars to subsidize behavior that would exist without it...we are literally wasting money when we give it to people to do a thing that they would be doing anyways.”
  — Rob Sand, State Auditor [21:04]

• On who is left in public schools:

  “Someone needs to love and care for these kids that nobody cares about. And it's not that the parents don't care. They don't have the access and know the federal laws and the laws to take to get them somewhere. And even if they did, they might be denied.”
  — Principal Kondra Allred [30:25]

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Key Timestamps

• 01:06 – Cory Turner explains school choice spectrum
• 02:36 – Governor Kim Reynolds’ “fund students, not systems” policy
• 04:27 – School board meeting & threats of public school closures
• 07:13–10:24 – Tour of Cedar Rapids Prep, effects on district
• 10:31–13:04 – Parents’ reasons for leaving public schools
• 14:14 – Role of private philanthropy supporting charter school facilities
• 15:13 – Justin Blitz’s firing: leadership complications at Prep
• 17:48 – Visit to Xavier High School, ESAs make private school more accessible
• 21:04 – State Auditor Rob Sand criticizes universal private school subsidies
• 24:29 – Disparities in serving students with disabilities and low-income students
• 28:23 – Antoine Jones discusses the community impact of school closures
• 30:25 – Kondra Allred’s passionate defense of public education
• 32:10 – Final reflection on school choice and the “common good”

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Conclusion

The Cedar Rapids case study paints a nuanced picture: School choice offers opportunity and satisfaction for some, but also exacerbates resource inequalities and leaves the highest-need students in increasingly marginalized public schools. For Iowa—and the nation—the challenge lies in ensuring that the expansion of “choice” does not come at the expense of public education’s foundational commitment to serving every child.

Transcript

[Aisha Rascoe]

Aisha I'm Aisha Rascoe, and this is the Sunday Story from Up first this week, school choice. Those two words cover all kinds of programs that are meant to let parents choose to send their child to a school other than their neighborhood public school. Maybe it's to another public school or a public charter school or even a private school in the US School choice is often politically charged and even emotional.

[Parent (unspecified)]

I hate to even say that I would consider it, but I think I represent a lot of families that if we're not looking at the best situation for our kids, we're gonna move our kid to a private school, and I don't wanna do that.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Today on the Sunday Story, NPR education correspondent Cory Turner takes us to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a city swimming in choice to understand what increased school choice really looks like for parents who want the best for their kids. Corey joins us now. Welcome.

[Cory Turner]

Thanks for having me, Aisha.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So, Corey, school choice is this idea that covers such a wide range of programs and policies. Can you walk us through the basics?

[Cory Turner]

Yeah, you bet. So think of school choice as a spectrum, right? So on one end you've got public school choice, things like magnet programs and open enrollment policies that allow kids to apply to other public schools, either in their home districts or maybe in a neighboring district. Then you move over a little bit, and somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you got charter schools, which are technically public schools, but they're managed independently and they're often exempted from oversight. And then finally, at the other end of the spectrum, you've got private school choice. And the idea here is to use public dollars to help families pay for private, even religious schools, using things like vouchers or education savings accounts, known as ESAs. And today, Aisha, I want to take you to Iowa because they have the full spectrum, including one of the most generous private school ESA programs in the whole country. Starting this school year, the state's offering any child in Iowa $8,000 a year to spend in a private school.

[Aisha Rascoe]

I mean, that's nothing to sneeze at, right?

[Cory Turner]

So back in January, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds made clear she's done with old public school system status quo.

[Commercial Announcer]

Our message to the nation is simple. In Iowa, we fund students, not systems.

[Cory Turner]

For Reynolds and other Republicans pushing for more school choice, the point here isn't just to help families move from school A to school B. The idea really is to put pressure on the public schools to improve by creating competition.

[Aisha Rascoe]

When we come back, just what that competition actually looks like inside schools. Stay with us.

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Aisha Rascoe]

NPR education correspondent Cory Turner. All right, Cory, you're taking us to Cedar Rapids. Like, where do we start?

[Cory Turner]

Well, I want to start back in January. We're at a school board meeting for the city's public schools. It's known as the Cedar Rapids Community School district, serves about 14,000 kids. And they're in a financial hole in part because they're losing students and dollars to school choice and to really right size. The district says it needs to close up to six elementary schools. So at this meeting in January, parents are angry about this idea that they might lose their neighborhood public school.

[Parent Kaylee Marlow]

Have you thought about the cost of it, the emotional and mental impact it's going to have on our children, on the teachers jobs that you are costing some of the best teachers I have ever seen in my damn life.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

I'm sorry.

[Cory Turner]

Parent Kaylee Marlow was clearly angry. Elizabeth Pomeroy broke down.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

As a parent, I am trying to plan not just for one child, but excuse me, but how these could. Excuse me, but how these changes ripple across our entire household.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Tell me more about, like, why did the district feel like they have to start closing schools?

[Cory Turner]

Well, there are a bunch of reasons here, Aisha, but they really all come down to money. Many of the school buildings are old and they need to be either renovated or replaced. I got a tour of one of them, Cleveland Elementary. It's one of the schools on the chopping block. It's 75 years old and it feels like it's from another era. It's not ADA compliant. It has a fireplace in the library that doesn't work anymore. It's got lots of wood paneling and old windows in the main hallway. I love this. I don't know what the word would be. Beveled glass. Love these windows.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

They're pretty fragile. A few have broken. But we make it work.

[Cory Turner]

Principal Kondra Allred gave me the tour. We'll hear more from her later. For now, I just want you to know that line she said, will make it work. It's really the mantra of a principal running a cash strapped school.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

But we made it work.

[Cory Turner]

It's easy to see that this school was once beautiful and it remains a cornerstone of the community. But it needs money. And twice the district actually asked voters for help for extra money through a bond measure. But twice voters said no. Iowa's funding formula, the per student amount, it's lagged inflation for years. And then there is the money crunch that comes with school choice. Cedar Rapids has again for years been losing students to suburban public schools through the state's open enrollment program. And now it's losing kids to a brand new charter school and to private schools.

[Aisha Rascoe]

It seems like it's having a real impact, right?

[Cory Turner]

It is. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so when I went to Cedar Rapids, my goal was really to visit the competition and to see how this works. So, Aisha, I want to start you off here with a visit to that brand new charter school I just mentioned. How far away is it? A mile and a half maybe. I got a driving tour from Justin Blitz. He's the charter school's founding principal. He showed me around the modest industrial town of Cedar Rapids, which by the way, is home of Quaker Oats.

[Justin Blitz]

You can usually figure out what cereal's being made. My dad actually works at Quaker and

[Cory Turner]

what am I smelling? Yesterday was really weird and sweet.

[Justin Blitz]

Was it Crunch Berries? Was it Crunch Berry Day?

[Cory Turner]

Maybe? Might have been, yeah. Crunchberries, yes. As in Cap' n Crunch. So his school, Cedar Rapids Prep, is in its first full year as a middle school. But Blitz took me to see the much larger spot that they plan to grow into and that he hopes to have ready by the fall. The future middle and elementary school was in the middle of a multi million dollar Florida studs remodel and it was already clear. Aisha, Justin Blitz envisioned a pretty incredible school.

[Justin Blitz]

This area, which was all cubicles essentially prior, will be our science wing. So we'll have premier lab space in the middle that will have all the features of a college level lab.

[Cory Turner]

But the building's coolest. Feature is in the cafeteria. But wait. There is literally, like, a playground slide down here by the cafeteria that appears to go up to the second floor.

[Justin Blitz]

Yeah. So it was not hard to sell our kids on moving to a new space. When I said, well, guess what? You can take a slide from class to lunch every day, they were sold.

[Parent Antoine Jones]

So.

[Cory Turner]

So I had to try it out.

[Chris McCarvel]

Here we go.

[Cory Turner]

That's pretty good. That's a nice slide.

[Aisha Rascoe]

I mean, you sounded very composed there.

[Cory Turner]

You went down like I went down.

[Aisha Rascoe]

That was. I mean, like. I mean, you went down, like, totally stoic. Because I would have been like, ah. But. But I have to say, my kids would love that. So I can see how the kids would love it.

[Cory Turner]

I mean, if I were 10, I would want to go to part of the point here. Aisha. It's an easy sell, which is one more reason Justin Blitz, who used to work for Cedar Rapids Public Schools, told me he's actually been taking some heat from folks for going over to the competition.

[Justin Blitz]

I've received, you know, anonymous mail saying, you know, I hope you're glad you're ruining public education. And, you know, which is. You know, it.

[Cory Turner]

It hurts.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So ruining public education, education like that, I mean, that's a strong accusation. What impact is he having?

[Cory Turner]

Well, the district told me it lost about 230 kids to Blitz's new school. And when a child leaves to go to a charter school, they take more than $8,000 of state and local funding with them. So even though Prep is technically a public charter school, they. Their gain is absolutely the district's loss.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So I guess my. My next question is, like, why are families leaving the traditional public schools?

[Cory Turner]

Well, I spoke with a bunch of families when I was there, including Oscar and Adam Kvera, who took three of their children out of their local public school and enrolled them at Cedar Rapids Prep. Adam told me that he and Oscar fully support public education. And politically, they're kind of uncomfortable with Governor Kim Reynolds embrace of school choice.

[Oscar Kvera]

You know, I'm a gay Jew from Wisconsin with six Latino children, married to an Argentine. I am a liberal through and through.

[Cory Turner]

But Oscar Caesvera told me something happened at their daughter Erica's traditional public school.

[Chris McCarvel]

One day, the school called me and said, erika needs to speak with the police. And I am like, excuse me.

[Oscar Kvera]

She had witnessed something at the school, so they were calling to tell us that the police were about to question her.

[Cory Turner]

The caveares told me Erica also needs extra support at school, but her teachers were often too busy managing behavior to give it. I Even asked Erica about this when we were in the car with Oscar.

[Erica Kvera]

And they were just trying to, like, control the students, which didn't really ever work out because they just end up arguing with them, and then they just have to call someone to get the students, which still didn't really do anything.

[Cory Turner]

Was that pretty common?

[Erica Kvera]

Yeah.

[Cory Turner]

Now, I spoke with several charter school families who all told me pretty similar stories. So I looked at the data. Last year, the Cedar Rapids School district recorded nearly 4,000 incidents that led to a suspension or expulsion. And this is in a district that serves around 14,000 kids. That's a lot of disruption considering this level of punishment is super supposed to be reserved for the most severe behavior. I asked the district about this too, and they said a couple things. That they are more accurately recording incidents now that might not have been recorded in previous years. And that after Covid, they did see a rise in intense behavior that led to more safety issues and more suspensions. Adam Kvera told me he still supports the mission of public education.

[Oscar Kvera]

I believe in the greater good, but my kids have to come first for me. For us. We're two guys living in a small town in Iowa with six foster adopted kids, and they came with some challenges and needs, and we have to make sure that we make the choices that best suit those needs. Greater good has to come second.

[Aisha Rascoe]

The greater good. You said at the top that public charter schools have to accept everyone who applies. So is that also the case for Cedar Rapids Prep?

[Cory Turner]

Yes. Prep is not selective. If more kids apply than they have slots, they have to use a lottery. Which is why the student body at Prep mirrors pretty closely the public schools.

[Aisha Rascoe]

But is there a downside to having Cedar Rapids Prep as part of the public system? You know, this idea that this is

[Cory Turner]

ruining public education, it really depends on who you ask, Aisha. So the families I talk with say no, it's good, it's fair, and it's diverse, and it's free. But the district told me again, the students in funding they're losing to schools like Cedar Rapids Prep are part of the reason they're now having to consolidate and close traditional neighborhood schools.

[Aisha Rascoe]

One thing I don't understand is if Cedar Rapids Prep is trying to win over families, like with the state of the art lab and the cafeteria slide, but it's still a public school. How can it afford all this stuff?

[Cory Turner]

This is where the plot thickens. It turns out as a charter school, Cedar Rapids Prep is largely funded for now by a billionaire philanthropist, Joe Ricketts, who founded TD Ameritrade. And so in the free market that Iowa Republicans have tried to create in Cedar Rapids, the traditional public schools have to compete with prep, even though they don't have Ricketts deep pockets. And families are asking, why does this charter school look so much nicer than those other public schools? You know, I want my kids to have Apple computers and a college level chemistry lab and an indoor slide and,

[Aisha Rascoe]

and, you know, not an obsolete fireplace and all of that. And look, that's understandable. You want your kid to be in the nicest, best of the best. But also, just because you don't have the best facilities doesn't mean that you don't have great teachers or what have you. It's complicated. Like, it's a complicated thing.

[Cory Turner]

It's complicated. And since you put it that way, I have one more thing I need to share about Cedar Rapids Prep that is very complicated, and that is that after I left Cedar Rapids, principal Justin Blitz was arrested and charged with harassment for verbally threatening a woman. Now he has pled not guilty. At first. The school put Blitz on leave. It has since fired him. But that has definitely complicated the story for Cedar Rapids Prep.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Well, I mean that, you know, that is a plot twist that is out of left field. Are there like, any larger implications to that, or is this kind of like an isolated thing?

[Cory Turner]

Well, so I think this is really interesting. Again, we're talking about, in the ideal, a free market. You're selling a product. And Justin Blitz as principal last year was meeting with parents and selling a product. Prep was shiny and new, and now it is somewhat tainted. You know, Blitz's arrest was a big story locally. Now I got back in touch with Adam K. Zvera to find out how he's feeling. He told me he was shocked, but, quote, as long as the school moves forward, we remain on board and the school is moving forward. They have an interim principal. I think the real challenge is going to be next year and the year after. Can they continue to attract parents if one of the only things families in the city know about the school is that their first principal was arrested?

[Aisha Rascoe]

When we come back, we'll visit with a family that chose to leave their local public school for a private Catholic school. Now that the state is helping to foot the bill. Stay with us.

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[Aisha Rascoe]

and we're talking with NPR's Cory Turner about school choice and specifically what's happening in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So where are we going next?

[Cory Turner]

All right, we're going to Xavier High School. It's a private Catholic school on a beautiful sprawling campus on the city's north side. And I want to start Aisha, in the hallway at the moment, I saw what is the largest trophy case I have ever seen.

[Unspecified Xavier High School Staff]

Oh my.

[Cory Turner]

You all take sports seriously. I'm, I am.

[Chris McCarvel]

These are just the runner up trophies.

[Parent (unspecified)]

So.

[Cory Turner]

Wait, are you joking?

[Chris McCarvel]

No, no. I guess we do have a few championship ones only because we've run out of room.

[Cory Turner]

Chris McCarvel is the president of the entire Xavier Catholic school system, which includes roughly seven private elementary and or middle schools, plus Xavier High School, all in and around Cedar Rapids and Aisha. I, I started with the trophy case because as somebody who's visited a lot of schools in my career, what I really see here is success and money. Upstairs at the school, the high school has a beautiful chapel, seats about 100 students.

[Chris McCarvel]

They shouldn't be getting faith development just in theology. It should be part of the science curriculum, part of the math curriculum. It should be part of football. It should be part of everything that

[Aisha Rascoe]

we do that makes sense for a Catholic school. Religion would be a big part of its mission. How does Xavier pay for all of this?

[Cory Turner]

So it used to be a combination of tuition and financial support from alumni and the local parish. Next year, families will pay between 9 and $10,000 a year in tuition. Non Catholic families will pay little more. Until recently, tuition was high enough that Xavier was out of reach for some families in the city.

[Aisha Rascoe]

And so what has this new private school choice program then meant for Xavier? I would think that more people could

[Cory Turner]

go, yeah, it's meant a lot. Iowa Republicans created those education savings accounts again ESAs back in 2023. And Chris McCarvel told me he remembered

[Chris McCarvel]

the day very clearly when it got signed into law. That was a really happy day for a lot of us in I'm going to speak for Catholic schools statewide because that was something that we had been advocating for for many, many years, decades.

[Cory Turner]

Now any Iowa kid can get about $8,000 from the state to help pay for private school tuition. And McCarville told me almost all of the families now at Xavier are using it this year, about 98%.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So what about the kids who were already enrolled in a private school last year and the year before whose families were already paying tuition? They're also using this benefit.

[Cory Turner]

Yeah, the state's paying for them, too, which is why it's costing now more than $300 million a year. According to one estimate, more than half of students using the program were already at a private school. And I was not alone in this. I've seen this in other states, new choice programs. Rob sand is Iowa's state auditor, and he's a rare Democrat elected to statewide office in Iowa. He's not a fan of. Of this idea of paying private school students to keep doing what they were already doing.

[Rob Sand]

That is dumb. We should not be using tax dollars to subsidize behavior that would exist without it. We're not making a difference. We are literally wasting money when we give it to people to do a thing that they would be doing anyways.

[Cory Turner]

That said, Aisha, I did talk to some public school parents who told me, look, these ESAs made a huge difference, and they opened the door to private school that was closed to them before open. Among those parents is Stephanie King.

[Stephanie King]

I think for me to make the change, the ESA was necessary.

[Cory Turner]

A few years ago, King, who is not Catholic, sent her youngest to public school, and she kind of bristled at the fact that many of her neighbors were using private schools.

[Stephanie King]

You don't send your kids to public school. That's so awful. But there was a reason.

[Cory Turner]

The reason, she said, was the same reason that she ended up switching to her daughter's public school. Was pretty distracting, she said, with lots of fighting and yelling.

[Stephanie King]

I feel like I'm doing my duty. My duty is to pay my taxes, which I do. And if I am able to take some of the money that I have paid in to educate my child to a place where I feel like my kid's getting a better education, I think that's okay.

[Cory Turner]

Even with this new choice program, the data suggests that Xavier schools may still be out of reach for the city's poorest families. So of Xavier's more than 2,500 students, about 13% are low income compared to the public schools, where 57% of kids are low income. I actually asked McCarville, if the point of public education is to serve all kids, to serve the common good, can private schools be relied on to do the same?

[Chris McCarvel]

How are our schools not for the common good? If, again, our schools serve families that have a desire to have faith, be an extension of what they get at home, what they get at their parish. And our kids go out into the world and do amazing things. How and why is that any different than a public school?

[Aisha Rascoe]

Well, Corey, I want to ask you the same question that I asked about the charter schools. Under the school choice program, to get state dollars, do private schools have to accept all students?

[Cory Turner]

No, It's a very different story. Private schools, by law, have lots of say over who they accept. So they can turn away a child for poor grades or, say, a history of misbehavior. They can also say no to kids with disabilities by saying, look, we don't have the resources to give you what you need. Which may be true, but it also means for those students, it's the school's doing the choosing. I asked Chris McCarvel about this.

[Chris McCarvel]

Oftentimes, for us, what it comes down to is, can we serve your child adequately? And sometimes, unfortunately, the answer is no.

[Cory Turner]

McCarvill told me he has been trying to make Xavier more welcoming for kids with disabilities, but that special education can be incredibly expensive, which helps explain why, Aisha, again, the data, the share of kids with a special education plan, known as an iep, is more than four times higher in the public schools than it is in Xavier's schools.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Yeah, I mean, that's what I was thinking the whole time we're talking is I'm thinking, well, what about those students who are left behind because everybody isn't going and doing the school choice? You know, and that might take a parent who's really involved, understands the system, understands. And if you. You may not have those resources, if you. A grandmama taking care of your grandkids, and you don't even get on the Internet. So who are these kids who are being left behind, in a sense, in these public schools?

[Cory Turner]

Well, I want to take you to Cleveland elementary.

[Justin Blitz]

Now.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

Hold on. See if this is open.

[Erica Kvera]

All right, we're coming in.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Hi, Jay.

[Cory Turner]

So this is the moment we played earlier. Aisha, that's principal Kondra Allred. She's showing me the school's old library. It's now subdivided into smaller areas by these metal shelves, and in one of these spots, a student with autism is walking in a circle with an adult enjoying a sensory break.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

So that's like our sensory area, the makeshift in our library. Newer schools probably have a space for that, but we made it work.

[Cory Turner]

There it is. We made it work. Allred wore a pink fanny pack with a walkie talkie so she could respond to a crisis at a moment's notice. At Cleveland, she runs a district wide program for kids with disabilities. And when we reached her office, there was actually a student there, too, who was calming down with an adult after a meltdown.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

Are you good now? I got a hug from Ms. Allred.

[Cory Turner]

It's fitting that even Allred's office is a kind of refuge. I remember thinking this in the moment. And it's because children with disabilities have federally protected rights to special education in public schools. But it's a very different story in private schools. Allred told me she has seen choice schools in Cedar Rapids either reject a disabled student outright or admit them, only to push them out when they become too much work.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

We've had two or three incidences where students start in another choice school in the. In the city. I'm not going to name names, but. But within weeks, they're back at our school.

[Cory Turner]

It's also clear, though, that families who don't need special services, some of them at least, are taking their kids elsewhere and they're not coming back. Allred told me she has gone from more than 300 kids at Cleveland to about 250, another reason the district suddenly announced Cleveland was on the chopping block. Which led to a hard talk between Allred and her family.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

My own son came home and said, are you gonna have a job? Because it was all over social media. So he knew. I said, yeah, I'll have a job. It's just where. So I will support. I will go wherever the district needs me to go. But it's sad to think about not coming here with the staff that we have, because we have a great staff who will do anything for kids. That's.

[Aisha Rascoe]

I mean, that's really tough. And I mean, she just sounds really dedicated, you know, to these kids and to the school.

[Cory Turner]

I mean, she lives it and breathes it. And also, going back to something you said earlier, Aisha, Principal Allred told me she really worries that school choice, the way it's been built in Iowa, is dividing families into those that have the time and the money and the know how to seek out these other options and those who don't. But I do want to be really clear here. I spoke with a number of parents who could leave, but they don't want to. They love Cleveland. They love what it stands for, the staff, the legacy. For 75 years, parent Antoine Jones has three kids at Cleveland. He says he's not going anywhere.

[Parent Antoine Jones]

And one of the reasons why I bought the home where I did is because of Cleveland. You know, so it's very sad because I just think schools are the backbone of a community. And not only do I fear, like, what will happen to my investment that I made into the community, I just fear what might happen to the community as a whole.

[Cory Turner]

Jones wakes up at 2:30 in the morning to load cargo planes at the airport. And when he's done, around seven, he goes home, helps his kids get ready for school, and then he goes with them, Aisha, because he works during the day as a para educator at Cleveland for kids with disabilities. He told me he had no idea how hard Allred and her teachers were working until.

[Parent Antoine Jones]

Until I had the opportunity to come into the school system myself and see that it's so many kids that need help in a public school and then the job that the teachers are doing.

[Cory Turner]

I told Jones what we were talking about earlier. Some parents saying they left the public schools because they felt like they'd gotten too disruptive and distracting, even unsafe. But Jones pushed back on that. He's black. He told me he grew up in Chicago and said he remembers moving into a suburban neighborhood when he was in middle school and watching white families leave.

[Parent Antoine Jones]

It's not for me to say what's right or what's wrong, but a lot of the time, like, they'll say safety just because they don't want to say what it really is. I don't feel comfortable with my kids going there with those kids.

[Cory Turner]

And it turns out again, you look at the data, the share of white students in the district has dropped a lot over the past decade, while the district share of students with disabilities and kids living in poverty has increased. And this isn't unique to Cedar Rapids. I've seen this in other cities, too, with school choice going back to Principal Allred, she got really emotional when she talked about the old public school way, you know, serving the common good.

[Principal Kondra Allred]

It's getting harder to. Harder to teach in public education. And those of us that are here and who've been doing it for 25, 26 years, we truly believe in public education because someone needs to love. Sorry, someone needs to love and care for these kids that nobody cares about. And it's not that the parents don't care. They don't have the access and know the federal laws and the laws to take to get them somewhere. And even if they did, they might be denied.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So how do you make sense of all of this? Like, what do you feel like this means for the country?

[Cory Turner]

I don't think the takeaway from my trip to Cedar Rapids is school choice is unequivocally bad because it's not for the Kayes Veras and Stephanie King. You know, it got their kids into schools where they are happier and doing better. I don't think what's happening in Cedar Rapids is that unusual either. We've seen many states in recent years really go all in on school choice, especially private school choice. The takeaway for me, Aisha, is public schools are still vitally important and they need protecting. They are not businesses. They are not designed to compete. They're designed to serve every child. And in that way, I think school choice really pushes and pulls at a fundamental American value that every child deserves a quality education, regardless of race or disability or income, whether they have one parent or two or none, whether they live in a big city or the tiniest town. Our loose local networks of free public schools grew imperfectly out of that value to serve the common good. Now, it is possible that some version of school choice can also serve the common good. But I think it is really important when politicians and communities ask themselves, is this working, that they're not leaving the most vulnerable children behind?

[Aisha Rascoe]

Well, thank you so much, Cory, for giving us some things to think about and for all of this reporting.

[Cory Turner]

Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.

[Aisha Rascoe]

That was NPR education correspondent Cory Turner. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Justine Yan with help from Lauren Migaki. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Nicole Cohen, fact checking by Will Chase. The engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Special thanks to James Kelly at Iowa Public Radio and Grace King. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo and our senior supervising producer, Liana Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. I'm Aisha Rascoe. And up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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