School choice has exploded across the country over the past few years — no thanks to Democrats , who are doing everything they can to prevent families from determining the best education for their children.

One Democrat in Georgia even left her party over its opposition to a school choice package that would have created $6,500 vouchers for students in poor-performing public school districts. Mesha Mainor, who switched her party affiliation to the GOP this week, was the only Democrat in the state legislature to support the bill. She spent weeks urging her colleagues to reconsider their position, pointing out that the bill would primarily help low-income minority students whose families can’t afford to leave failing public schools. In response, Georgia Democrats vowed to oust Mainor from the legislature, with state Rep. Josh McLaurin offering $1,000 to anyone who agreed to primary her.

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Mainor, it seems, has some principle. Few of her former colleagues can say the same.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) caved last week to the leftist members of his party and teachers union officials who fund their campaigns by bailing on his pledged support for school choice legislation. He announced he would line-item veto the $100 million allocated by the Pennsylvania Senate for the Pennsylvania Award for Student Success program, an initiative that offers scholarships to low-income students in low-performing districts so they can attend better, private schools.

Not only had Shapiro promised Senate Republicans that he would support the funding if they would include several Democratic priorities in the state’s budget, but he also promised voters, the people he serves, that he would support school choice while campaigning for governor.

“It’s what I believe,” Shapiro said at the time. “I think we can invest in public education and empower parents to put their kids in the best opportunity for them to succeed.”

His campaign website specified that he supported “adding choices for parents and educational opportunity for students and funding lifeline scholarships like those approved in other states and introduced in Pennsylvania.”

The 77% of Pennsylvania parents who support school choice believed what he said, and this is how Shapiro has repaid them — with cowardice.

But Shapiro’s betrayal shouldn’t come as a surprise. Like the rest of his party, he is completely beholden to teachers unions, which vigorously oppose school choice since it puts at risk the hefty dues they collect. In fact, campaign finance records show the Pennsylvania State Education Association donated $775,000 to Shapiro’s campaign, as well as more than $1 million to down-ballot Democratic candidates.

However, fear of losing the teachers unions’ checks is just part of the reason Democrats have made opposition to school choice a party position. At its core, Democrats' opposition to school choice stems from the realization that it would break the education monopoly they’ve spent the past several decades building. If parents have the financial power to leave the government’s system, then that system no longer has control — control over government funds, over the ideological upbringing of children, and over the families who have been bullied into thinking they have no say in the matter.

Well, tough luck. Parents see Democrats’ education monopoly for what it is: a scam. They watched their children’s academic progress spiral as public schools shut students out of the classroom for months (and, in some cases, years), pumped their minds full of radical, ideological nonsense, and worked to silence parents who dared to call education officials out. And as a result, support for school choice is surging, with nearly three-quarters of the country expressing support for expanded education freedom and 14 states taking legislative action in 2023 alone to make it a reality.

If Democrats hope to stem that tide, they’ll have to do a lot better than Shapiro.

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Kaylee McGhee White is the editor of Restoring America for the Washington Examiner and a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.