I was still jazzed as I slid into the Uber. I’d spent the day with a crew of education freedom evangelists at a DC event. Boy, did I feel good. It’s glorious to be on the right side of a fight that isn’t weighed down by complexity or nuance.

The Uber driver glanced at my bright yellow “Education Freedom Now” ball cap and asked what that was about.

I told her I was glad she asked, that it was about empowering parents to choose the kind of schooling that works for their kid.

“So, it’s school choice?”

I nodded.

“I like school choice,” she said. “My daughter’s in a charter school. And my sister’s kids are in Catholic school. But I don’t get all the people on social media shouting that public schools are failing and teachers are evil. What’s up with that?”

“They’re not saying teachers are evil. I think they’re explaining that teacher unions don’t put kids first,” I said.

“That’s kind of splitting hairs, isn’t it?” she asked.

“No, it’s a huge distinction,” I said. “Huge!”

She shrugged.

I simmered down. “Anyway, they’re trying to build awareness of options and the promise of new school models,” I said.

“If you say so,” she said. “But I never see McDonald’s commercials telling me how awful Wendy’s is, or insulting the people who work at Burger King.”

“Well,” I said, “we’re breaking new ground in marketing here. We’ve even got consultants helping us with these phrases. So you know they’re going to pop.”

“Sure,” she said.

We drove in silence for a bit. “Yeah, you can just chalk it up to our passion for giving parents practical options,” I added.

“Actually,” she said, “a lot of the talk doesn’t seem so practical. There’s this guy on the radio who keeps talking about ‘blowing up zip-code schooling.’ He reminds me more of those idiots who said they wanted to defund the police than someone with a practical solution.”

“Well, trust me, those lines are real zingers,” I explained. “The people who tweet about school-assignment policy go wild for them. You see, students traditionally attend schools based on where they live. That’s ‘zip-code schooling.’ We want families to be able to choose where their kids go to school, wherever they live.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “But ‘blow up zip-code schooling’ makes it sound like you want to get rid of neighborhood schools.”

“Well, yeah.”

“But what if someone likes their neighborhood school?”

“You see, we’re trying to—”

“I mean, neighborhood schools seem like a good thing,” she said. “They let young kids go to school close to home. They let families meet their neighbors and kids make friends in the neighborhood. Plus they make carpooling and sports more manageable. Why is that bad?”

She wasn’t getting it. “The point,” I said, “is that the money should follow the kid. Think of it like there’s tuition money in the kid’s backpack. We call it ‘backpack’ funding. You see, we believe in funding kids, not systems.”

“So you want to put the money in each kid’s backpack?” she asked.

“No, not literally,” I said. “It’s just a clever metaphor, a catchy phrase.”

“You’ve got a lot of catchy phrases,” she said.

“Right?!” I enthused. “We’ve spent a lot of time working on them.”

“Here’s something I’ve wondered about,” she said. “Those Republican types worry about how people use food stamps because some of them won’t be responsible. And I definitely know some people in my family I don’t trust to make good decisions. So how come that’s not a problem here?”

“Granted, when you give parents choices, you’re going to disagree with some of those choices,” I said. “Look, if there’s a microschool that lets kids play with kerosene, we’ll have to address it.”

“Speaking practically, that’s not super reassuring,” she said.

“But, darn it,” I said, “I’m talking about education freedom. Remember the backpack. And the zip code deal.”

We drove in silence for a minute or two until I added, “And families need to be able to escape woke public schools that are bent on indoctrinating their kids.”

“I get that,” she said. “Some of the stuff about privilege and 57 genders is nuts. But it’s not just public schools. My neighbor’s kid is in a KIPP charter school, and she told me they dumped their ‘Work Hard, Be Nice’ slogan because it’s racist. That’s pretty crazy, and that’s at a choice school.”

“That’s why it’s important to have options,” I said. “It creates a market full of choices, you see.”

“Okay, but around here,” she said, “a lot of the charter and private schools seem crazier than the district schools. So, practically speaking, I’m not sure your market is working like you say.”

I took a deep breath. “Think of it like higher education,” I said. “You know how students can use public grants or loans to pick from lots of colleges? This is like Pell Grants for kids.”

She laughed. “Are colleges really a good example? I mean, talk about nutty! And I don’t know many folks out there who say colleges are a model we should be imitating.”

I sighed.

She paused. “I don’t mean to tell you your business. And I like school choice. But maybe you should spend less time on slogans and more on explaining whether my kid can still go to school close to where I live or how to make sure the choices families have are good ones. Otherwise, you might pass a lot of laws only to wind up with parents and politicians upset they didn’t get what they expected.”

I gave up. It’s tough for a layperson to understand the fine art of advocating for education freedom.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”