Baseball season may be over, but this week you can still catch a doubleheader: the Cato Daily Podcast features back-to-back episodes on the explosion of school choice this year.

First up is the Cardinal Institute’s Jessi Troyan to explain how West Virginia went from worst to first when it comes to school choice. Just over two years ago, West Virginia had no school choice programs. In June 2019, a very limited charter school plan was passed. But the real news happened this year, when the state passed the nation’s first nearly universal education savings account (ESA) program. Called the Hope Scholarship, it is open to every current public school students as well as incoming kindergartners—which means more than 90 percent of students in the state will be eligible.

How did the state make so much progress in so little time? According to Troyan, West Virginia in 2021 exemplifies the saying “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” The Cardinal Institute and other coalition partners, including parents, have been working on this issue for years. So, when the pandemic struck last year—and lawmakers starting hearing from parents who were upset with how schools were handling things—supporters were ready to help get legislation passed.

The West Virginia experience is the perfect intro for the second episode of the school choice doubleheader. EdChoice’s Jason Bedrick, who is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, joined the podcast to talk about his recent report on the perpetual claims of doom from school choice opponents.

In Who’s Afraid of School Choice?, Bedrick and his colleague Ed Tarnowski went back and looked at opponents’ predictions from the five states with the oldest and largest school choice programs—Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. And they found some outlandish claims:

“This is the day that will go down in the annals of Florida history as the day we abandoned the public schools and the day that we abandoned, more importantly, our children.”

– Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (March 25, 1999)

“I think vouchers would weaken and, in some cases, destroy public schools.”

– Ohio Rep. Karen M. Doty (March 20, 1995)

But the reality was the opposite of these predictions. In all five states, National Assessment of Education Progress scores have improved. And in 28 academic studies on the effect of school choice programs on the performance of district schools, all but three find a positive impact.

Bedrick and Tarnowski also looked at the school choice programs passed this year and found similar levels of hysteria regardless of the size of the program.

Bedrick’s takeaway is “Don’t listen to the Chicken Littles. They’re going to squawk that the sky is falling no matter what.” But the evidence shows the sky isn’t falling and these programs are actually beneficial to district schools. So, says Bedrick, “Go big or go home.”

In other words, states should follow West Virginia’s lead. If school choice opponents are going to make the same claims regardless of the size of the program, there’s no reason to pick winners and losers among the state’s children. Universal programs give all kids the opportunity to find receive the best possible education.

As many lawmakers prepare for new legislative sessions in January, the West Virginia experience and the “Chicken Little” report offer valuable lessons on how to approach education policy. As this week’s Cato Daily Podcast doubleheader illustrates, it’s time to swing for the fences.