Who Should Decide How Children Are Educated?

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Who Should Decide HowChildren are Educated?
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who should decide how children are educated?

by jack klenk

christopher m. gacek, j.d., ph.d., editor

2010 family research council

all rights reserved.printed in the united states

Who Should Decide How

Children are Educated?

jack klenk served for twenty-seven years in the U.S. De-partment of Education under ve presidents and eight secretar-ies. He directed the Ofce of Non-Public Education which isresponsible for fostering the participation of nonpublic schoolstudents and teachers in federal education programs and ini-

tiatives. Mr. Klenk worked on policies and programs affectingschool choice, private schools, home schools, urban faith-basedschools, and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

by jack klenk

Introduction

Who has the primary responsibility for makingcritical decisions about the education of school-aged children? Their parents? Or government

and the school system it operates? That is a fun-damental question about education policy thatfaces the United States as it attempts to build ed-ucational institutions for the twenty-rst century.

Parents pay for public education through man-datory taxes. Most send their children to pub-lic schools, attend parent-teacher meetings,

encourage their children to do homework, andbake cookies for school events. However, deci-sions about what schools their children attendand what education programs the schools use aretypically made by the systems own profession-als. In short, parents fund, support, and coop-erate with the school system, but having power

over their childrens education is another thingaltogether. Control over how children learn hasmoved away from parents to other adults: admin-istrators in big school districts, state and federaleducation bureaucrats, legislators, judges, profes-sors in teacher colleges, teachers union ofcials,and members of other interest groups.1 If parents

want to use the monies for which they have

been taxed to pay for their children to attend


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schools of their choice, they nd themselves op-posed and in a position of weakness. The same is

true if they disagree with education professionalsregarding the content and methods used to teachtheir children. 2

Some believe that professional educators, govern-ment ofcials, and the public education system as

a whole are best positioned to make educationaldecisions for children. This belief is typicallybased on respect for the expertise, training, andunderstanding of pedagogy and social changeheld by education professionals. From this per-spective, those operating the educational institu-tions are more knowledgeable and enlightenedthan parents. Therefore, for the good of the chil-

dren and society, the experts must control educa-tional decision-making. This view sees schools asliberating freeing children from the limitationsof their families. Similarly, the school is consid-ered to be an instrument of social engineering ca-pable of bringing about societal change even if,

perhaps especially if, parents do not embrace thechanges. A mistrust of parents lies at the heart of

this viewpoint.3

There is an opposing perspective: parents arebest positioned to make educational decisions fortheir children. The fact that parents devote somuch of their lives, energy, and resources to rear-ing their children implies, on the whole, a power-ful parental desire to do what is in their childrens

best interest. Parents are also the adults closestto children, and, in almost all cases, know theirchildren better than anyone else. By and large,parents possess the best information about theirchildren. Thus, the nature of the parental rela-tionship suggests that there is great wisdom ingiving parents not distant organizations therole of making major decisions about the educa-tion of their children.

According to this point of view, parental rightsshould include the power to oversee importantdecisions about education. Parents should havethe authority to choose the schools that theydeem best suited for their children rather than

having a bureaucratic school system make suchassignments. In this view, schools should beagents of the parents and, when chosen by them,should operate in a partnership that supports theparents in the education of their children. Ac-cording to this perspective, schools exist to servefamilies, not the other way around.

Deference to parents is not based on a naive be-lief that they are inherently good while peoplewho work in the education system are inherentlybad. The reality is that both parents and edu-cators share the mixture of strengths and weak-nesses common to all people. Rather, respect forparents also comes, in part, from an understand-

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ing that families are the basic unit of society. Forsociety to be healthy, families must be strong, and

for families to be strong, other units of society including government and its schools must re-spect their independence.4

I support the second approach and favor givingprimacy to parents in educational decision-mak-ing. Parent-child relationships differ fundamen-tally from those that exist outside the family. If

schools displace parents from their proper rolein educational child-rearing, they discourage

parents from exercising responsibilities that areuniquely theirs. Such displacement is bound tohave negative consequences for children includ-ing reduced educational achievement. It alsoharms society itself as reduced expectations for

parental involvement become self-fullling andalienating. Finally, educational quality is boundto decline as the childs school and school system

worry less about customer-parents taking theirbusiness elsewhere.

The outcome of the contest to see who will con-trol the education of children is critical for our

families and schools today and for generationsto come. At present, those favoring control bygovernment and the system it operates generallyhave the upper hand, but forces promoting pa-rental control are asserting themselves. Some ofthe barriers to parental authority in education aredescribed below. That description is followed bya review of recent developments whereby parentsare regaining some measure of authority in theirchildrens education. I conclude with some re-ections on educational reform.

Critical Barriers to Parental

Authority Over their Childrens

EducationMany factors have contributed to weakening pa-rental authority in U.S. education. Here are ve:

1. The Fundamental Assumption thatthe School is an Agent of the State Rather

than an Extension of the Family

The late James Coleman, the most inuential so-ciologist of education in the late twentieth cen-tury,5 was deeply concerned about the marginal-ization of families from their childrens schools.Of great concern to Coleman was the fact thatthis separation of parents from schools was takingplace at a time when changes in the family were

making it more important than ever for schoolsto support parents.

Coleman wrote that changes in the Americanfamily since the mid-nineteenth century hadmade adults less available to children. This long-term development reduced social support or

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social capital as Coleman called it for chil-dren. Until the middle of the nineteenth century

in America, parents worked at home, usually ona farm, and involved their children in their work.In the past 150 years, the household has beentransformed: men left the farms to nd employ-ment away from the family household; children

went off to school; women left the householdfor paid work outside the family; family mem-bers did leisure-time activities with youth groupsand people of their own age instead of with theirextended, multi-generational family; parents di-

vorced, leaving the household not only for daily work but permanently; and, the young movedfrom psychic involvement in family to psychicinvolvement in mass media. Although Ameri-can children have gained more materially during

this time, these long-term family trends have de-creased the social capital (social support) avail-able to American children at home. This in turn,according to Coleman, increased their need foraccess to schools that could provide their students

with high social capital.6

Coleman observed that religious schools are more

successful than other schools in helping disadvan-taged children. For example, the dropout rate ismuch lower for single-parent children in Catho-lic schools compared with secular schools.7 Cole-man thought an important reason for this success

was higher social capital. Religious schools workmore closely with parents, and parents are moreinvolved with the communities of which they and

the schools are a part.8 By contrast, the publicschool is insufcient to meet the demands cre-ated by the loss of family functions being experi-enced today. [I]nstitutions independent of thestate are necessary to supplement the failing fam-ily. [T]he common school necessarily restricts

the range of socialization functions that can becarried out a restriction that is particularly

harmful to children as families weaken.9

After spending years studying schools and fami-lies, Coleman committed the heresy (in his

words) of concluding that the fundamental as-sumption on which publicly supported educationin the United States is based is wrong for the so-cial structure in which we nd ourselves today.10

That assumption was that the school is properlyan agent of society, or of the state, to free the childfrom the constraints, limitations, and narrow vi-sion of the family.11 Partly bolstered by thisassumption, and partly driven by the growth insize of school districts and professionalization ofschool staffs, Coleman observed, public schools

have come to be increasingly distant from thefamilies of children they serve, increasingly im-personal agents of a larger society.12

Coleman then contrasted the public school mind-set with the way religious schools viewed their re-

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lationships with parents and the community:

.schools operated by a religious com-munity do not share the assumptionon which public education is based.

The [religious] school is not regardedas an agent of the larger society or ofthe state, to free the child from thefamily. Rather, it is an agent of the re-ligious community of which the fam-

ily is an intrinsic part. The religiouslybased school is thus in a better positionthan is the public school to support andsustain the family in its task of raisingchildren.13

Coleman believed that the assumption motivat-ing religious schools is better for todays society

than the assumption driving the American publicschool system. He opined that it might be bestif the school were not an agent of the state or ofthe larger society, but an agent of the commu-nity of families closest to the child.15 He notedthat America had gone from a society in whichother social institutions owed from the familyto a society in which they were grounded outsidethe family. In this new social structure, Cole-man commented, the family has become a pe-ripheral institution, along with the remnants of

communities that were once the center of socialand economic life.15

As Coleman saw it, this grand social transforma-tion left two alternatives for the role of familiesin socializing children. The rst would be to ac-cept [the demise of families], and to substitute forthem new institutions of socialization, far morepowerful than the schools we know, institutionsas yet unknown.16 Coleman argued for taking

another path:

.to strengthen the familys capac-ity to raise its children, building uponthe fragments of communities thatcontinue to exist among families, andsearching for potential communities ofinterest. For this alternative, the school

is the one social institution that can and in some instances does continueto emanate from families and commu-nities of families. But for the school to besuch an institution requires abandoningthe assumption of the school as an agent ofthe state, and substituting an assumptioncloser to that in the private sector of edu-cation: the school is properly an extensionof the family and the social community orvalue community of which that family isa part.17

For some parents, this community is religious, forothers it is based on shared educational values, orethnicity or culture. But whatever the basis forcommunity, the role of the school is to fosterthat community.18

Colemans analysis led him to favor parentalchoice, along with other measures to make schoolsextensions of families and communities to which

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parents belong. The new social reality called forthe nurturing of cultural diversity wherever it is

based on a cohesive set of families. nurtur-ance, by the school, of those fragile social normsthat the families of a school will support.19 Inpoor neighborhoods and in the suburbs, it wouldentail the active involvement of the school inhelping to strengthen the norms that the parentshold for their children, norms that parents oftennd undercut by intrusions from the larger soci-ety.20 Moving in this new direction would re-quire rethinking the concept of equal education-al opportunity in a world in which the schoolis an agent of the family rather than the largersociety.21 Coleman concluded that this wouldrequire nothing less than wholesale change in thevery philosophy of education that now governs

our schools, public and private.22

Coleman had a prescription for a better future.But it came with a cost, not primarily of dollarsbut (much harder) of a willingness to reexaminedeeply-engrained patterns of thinking. Many re-

formers embrace the new thinking, but for muchof the American educational establishment,

changing the very philosophy of education thatnow governs our schools is a price too high topay.23

2. The Myth of the Common School

Another assumption shaping our education sys-tem to the disadvantage of parents is a secular

faith in the public school system. In this faith,the public school system is an engine of progressand enlightenment whose schools, and only itsschools, should receive public funding. This faithhas prevailed in the U.S. since Horace Mann,the father of public education, in the nineteenthcentury. The conviction is held so strongly that insome quarters questioning it is treated as heresy.

It is not unusual for people to think our countryhas always had a public school system which isnot the case.24

Professor Charles Glenn of Boston Universityhas called the belief in the public school sys-tem the myth of the common school.25 Thismyth, as Glenn explains it, insists that enlight-

enment is the exclusive province of public schools,which are thus the crucible of American life andcharacter in a way that schools independent ofgovernment could never be.26 While acknowl-edging the positive contributions of the myth topublic education, Glenn noted that it has beentransmuted into an establishment ideology that

borrows much of the language and the positiveassociations of the common school to serve a bu-reaucratized, monopolistic system that is increas-ingly unresponsive to what parents want for theirchildren.27 Glenn concluded that to a greatextent the myth of the common school wasinformed by a bias against orthodox religion.29

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The system of government schools envisaged byMann was intended to replace religious particu-

larism (whether Catholic or Calvinist) as well aslocal loyalties and norms with an emerging na-tional identity and culture.29

Mann and his fellow common school reformerswere hostile to private education and saw its de-feat as a major objective.30 Mann regarded pri-

vate schools as contributing to social disunity and

religious particularism (sectarianism).31 But aswith many other adherents of the common schoolfaith, Mann did not practice what he preached.Indeed, the father of pubic education did notsend his own children to a common school in-stead, his wife taught them.32

Horace Manns common school movement has

brought much good to the U.S., but the good istainted by a hostility to pluralism that endures tothis day. The mistake made by Horace Mann

and his fellow reformers was not their generous vision, Glenn says, but their ungenerosity

toward the stubborn particularities of loyalty andconviction, the mediating structures and world

views, by which people actually live.33

What Mann and his allies saw as an instrumentof progress was understandably perceived differ-ently by many parents. They were not pleased

with schools that they perceived to be undermin-

ing their authority as parents, their beliefs, andtheir values. Additionally, they were not pleasedthat the taxes they were compelled to pay wereused exclusively to fund such schools. SinceMann, these tensions have persisted. Those inpower have used the schools for purposes theydeem to be good, while many parents have ques-tioned the justice of such arrangements and havelooked for alternatives.

3. The Denial of Public Funding forNonpublic Alternatives

The common school movement grew and prevailed against Catholics (and others) who re-quested public funds for schools that would teachchildren according to the tenets of their faith.

The need for funds for such schools grew withthe burgeoning number of Catholic immigrantchildren in the U.S.34

In 1875, James Blaine, Speaker of the U.S. Houseof Representatives and future presidential candi-date, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Consti-tution to prohibit states from spending tax moneyfor schools controlled by a religious sect. Thelanguage was intended to prohibit public fundsfor Catholic schools. The proposed amendmenteasily passed in the House, but failed by four votesin the Senate. Despite the narrow defeat, Blaine

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and his allies succeeded in placing similar provi-sions Blaine Amendments in many state

constitutions. Some states were required to adoptBlaine Amendments as a condition of statehood.

According to the Becket Fund for Religious Lib-erty, thirty-seven states now have constitutionalprovisions that restrict government assistance tosectarian schools or educational institutions.35

The BlaineAmendments were designed to dis-

criminate against people who wanted a particularreligious education for their children, and theystill serve that function today.36 The effect, thenand now, is to restrict educational options for par-ents by making it difcult or impossible for statesto pay for the attendance of children at religiousprivate schools, even though the same states haveconstitutions that require payment for educationat public schools. Even though the U.S. SupremeCourt has ruled that a well-designed voucherprogram that pays for tuition at public or private(including religious) schools does not violate theEstablishment Clause of the First Amendment(Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 2002),37 state BlaineAmendments can still forbid such opportunities

for parents.38

4. The Attempt to Compel Parents toSend Their Children Exclusively to

Public Schools

A zeal for public schools, coupled with hostil-ity toward private schools and the families thatpatronized them, produced one of the greatestassaults on parental rights in American history.In 1922, in the state of Oregon, voters approveda referendum requiring all children between theages of 8 and 16 to attend public schools. Underthis amendment to the Oregon Compulsory Ed-ucation Act, parents would no longer have beenable to send their children to private schools as ofSeptember 1, 1926.

The campaign for the act portrayed public schoolsin glowing terms and private schools as dangerousfor society. The measure was supported by theKu Klux Klan which was quite powerful acrossthe nation at that time.39 One advertisement inthe Oregonian newspaper just before the electiondeclared, Free Public Schools: Americas NoblestMonument. It showed a public school toweringover the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capi-

tol, and a mountain. The ad declared:

This great building represents thePUBLIC SCHOOLS of the UnitedStates. This is the ONE thing thatis important in this nation. In com-parison with it, NOTHING ELSEhas importance. There is only one

really American schoolroom, that isthe PUBLIC schoolroom. There isonly one typically American school,and that is the American PUBLICSCHOOL.40

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It went on to issue a political admonition:

If [a politician] departs one inch fromthe old idea that the public school isthe SCHOOL OF AMERICA, andthe ONLY school, if he hesitates in hisloyalty to THAT school, he is a traitor

in the spirit of the United States, andyour vote should tell him so.

It should not surprise us that such thinking a warped perception of foundational Americanprinciples should produce such a dangerous law.Ideas have consequences.

After the referendum passed in 1922, two privateschools a Catholic school run by the Society ofthe Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Maryand the Hill Military Academy challenged theconstitutionality of the new law. The case washeard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1925 inPierce v. Society of Sisters.41 As noted in the casesyllabus, counsel for Oregon argued that the com-

pulsory public school attendance law was neces-sary to protect society against a variety of harmsit attributed to private education. For example,the law [was] intended to bring about a greaterequality in the operation of the school law.42Furthermore, the law would impede a rising tide

of religious suspicions caused by the separationof children along religious lines. Thus, the stat-

utes enforcement would reduce societal divisions. The private schools argued that the law wouldundermine parental rights, asserting that a par-ents right to guide his child is a most substantialpart of the liberty and freedom of the parent.43

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that theOregon statute violated the U.S. Constitution,

declaring:

, we think it entirely plain that theAct of 1922 unreasonably interferes

with the liberty of parents and guard-ians to direct the upbringing and edu-cation of children under their control. The fundamental theory of liberty

upon which all governments in thisUnion repose excludes any generalpower of the state to standardize itschildren by forcing them to acceptinstruction from public teachers only.The child is not the mere creature of thestate; those who nurture him and direct hisdestiny have the right, coupled with thehigh duty, to recognize and prepare him

for additional obligations.44

Pierce v. Society of Sisters overturned the require-ment that parents send their children exclusivelyto public schools. It is rightly considered a Mag-na Carta for parental rights in education. How-ever, the decision did not address the require-ment set forth in Blaine Amendments that publicfunding be allowed for public schools only. So

while Pierceremoved one legal barrier, it did notaddress another one that effectively renders theright guaranteed byPierceempty for parents whocannot afford to exercise it. For those who can-

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not afford private schools, the funding prohibi-tion says No almost as effectively as an outright

prohibition of attendance.

Children belong to the Republic

In opposition to the idea that parents have rightsto guide their childs upbringing stands the phi-losophy that children belong to the state. This isan idea that has an ancient pedigree. Plato, in his

Ideal Commonwealth, proposed that childrenshall be common, and no parent shall know itsown offspring nor any child its parent.45 Spartaput boys into barracks at age seven and assignedtheir education to ofcial guardians.46

After the French Revolution in 1789, the revo-lutionary government embarked upon a program

to destroy the nongovernmental schools that hadexisted under the ancien regime and to compelparents to enroll their children in new republi-can schools. The leaders of the Revolution were

determined to regeneratesociety and create a newpeopleusing the schools askey instruments in effecting

this change.47 As a leaderof the Revolution, Georges

Jacques Danton told theNational Convention, It

is time to reestablishthe grand principle

that children

belong to the Re- public more thanthey do to their

parents.48

This is the totalitarian view of children, educa-tion, and the state: children belong to the state,

and the state uses its schools as an instrumentfor molding children like plastic in order to cre-ate a new man and a new society. Fortunately,the U.S. Constitution prohibits this educationalphilosophy, as the Supreme Court made clear inPiercewhen it said that parents have a fundamen-tal right to guide the upbringing of their children,and that government has an obligation to respectthat right.49

5. Professionalization, Unionization, andthe Insulation of Public Schools

Public education in the U.S. has become highlyprofessionalized and unionized. This change hasled to a dramatic shift in power from parents andthe public to public school employees.50

John Dewey and his fellow Progressives put inplace lasting organizational reforms with the goalof shifting powerfrom local politi-cians to educationalprofessionals. Thisshift also reducedthe inuence thatparents had over theeducation of theirchildren. The Pro-gressives were sosuccessful that it

became quite un-clear whether theschools belongedto the public or tothe professionals.51Local school boards

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John Dewey

Georges JacquesDanton


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were weakened, school districts were consolidat-ed, schools were enlarged, teachers were required

to be state certied, teachers were compensatedby a standard salary schedule and protected withtenure, and principals were required to have teach-ing experience and take credentialed courses. Inthe new professional order, the teachers, admin-istrators, teacher colleges, and state ofcials had

vested interests which they protected, and schoolprofessionals had a stake in limiting the power ofthe laity.52

Parents lost more inuence later in the twenti-eth century when teacher unions power increasedgreatly. In the rst half of the twentieth centurythere was a consensus against collective bargain-ing for public employees; even FDR and theNEA opposed it.53 However, things changed inthe 1960s as unions went on illegal strikes in bigcities and forced the cities to grant them collec-tive bargaining rights.

With the advent of collective bargaining, unions were able to negotiate contracts with friendly

school boards whomthey had helped to

elect. The unionsused collective

b a r g a i n i n gagreementsto extendtheir politi-cal power

by requir-ing schooldistricts to

deduct fromemployees pay-

checks, not only

union dues but also additional fees that unlessa teacher-member explicitly objected could be

used for political activities.54 With these vast re-sources, the unions vigorously and effectively ad-

vanced an agenda that opposed parental choiceand other parent-friendly policies.

The unions, through collective bargaining andpolitical activities, have used their considerablepower to obtain higher salaries and benets while

increasing the state and local taxes required to payfor them. Additionally, they block reforms that

would improve schools and empower parents butlessen union power. Waiting for Superman, the2010 documentary lm, shows teacher union op-position to charter schools. The unions have op-posed merit pay and other forms of differentiatedcompensation such as paying more to math andscience teachers who are in short supply. Theyalso have opposed alternative certication, tenurereform, and the easing of cumbersome proceduresfor dismissing teachers.55 Individual parents whotake the opposite side on these matters are a poormatch for the union juggernaut. The two sidescompete on a decidedly uneven playing eld.

Parents Are Regaining Power

Can parents regain authority over their childrenseducation? Despite the barriers, some parents arerecovering a degree of their lost authority. Hereare some positive developments:

The number of parents who choosewhere their children go to school isincreasing.

A growing number of parents are exercising thepower of choice. Some enroll their children inprivate schools. Some homeschool their kids.

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Others choose charter, magnet, and other formsof public schools.

In 1993, 80 percent of children attended the pub-lic schools to which they were assigned. By 2007,the gure was 73 percent. During that same pe-riod, the percentage of children in chosen publicschools rose from 11 to 16 percent. In religiousprivate schools, it rose from 8 to 9 percent, andin private nonsectarian schools, it rose from 2 to

3 percent. Parents who choose schools are moresatised than parents who do not. In 2007, 52percent of parents with children in assigned pub-lic schools were very satised with their childrensschools, compared to 62 percent of parents ofchildren in chosen public schools, 79 percent ofparents of children in religious private schools,and 79 percent of parents of children in nonsec-tarian private schools.58

Charter schools are becoming morenumerous.

Charter public schools have received much at-tention in recent years, and rightly so. Charterschools enjoy greater autonomy than other public

schools. For example, charters are generally morefree than traditional public schools to hire capa-ble teachers and re ineffective ones. They canalso decide to do things like extend the length ofthe school day and year. They can adopt distinc-tive approaches to teaching rather than trying toplease everyone. Charter schools can introducepedagogical innovations with far less resistance.Signicantly, charter schools are accountable tothe bodies that charter them. If they fail to per-form, as sometimes has been the case, they canlose their charters and go out of business. Char-ters are schools of choice, not assignment, andthey are very popular with parents. Despite (or

because of ) these benets, they have been ercelyopposed in most places by teacher unions who

have used their political clout to limit and weakencharter schools.

Nevertheless, charter schools are charter publicschools. As such, they cannot offer parents theoption of religious schooling. This is a signicantdrawback for parents who want an education that

addresses the whole child spiritual as well as in-tellectual. If parents want religious schooling fortheir children, they have to turn to private schoolsor home schools.

Another limitation of charter schools is that theyare still relatively few in number and, where theyexist, students must often win a lottery to gain

admission to these popular institutions. In 2007,about 2 percent of U.S. public school students at-tended 4,132 charter schools. This was a largeincrease from 2002 (when 1.4 percent of all publicschool students attended 2,575 charter schools),but it was still smaller than the 2.9 percent of all

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school age children (not just public school stu-dents) who were homeschooled in 2007.

Homeschooling is growing.

Homeschooling is perhaps the ultimate in pa-rental involvement. Parents who homeschooldo not just choose schools for their children,they also do the teaching usually in coopera-tion with other homeschooling parents in their

own homes. The rapid growth in the number ofchildren whose parents make that commitmentis one of the most signicant developments inAmerican education in recent years. In 2007, 2.9percent of all children ages 5-17 (1.5 million stu-dents) were homeschooled, up from 2.2 percent

(1.1 million students) in 2003 and 1.7 percent(850,000 students) in 1999. 57 A quarter-century

ago, homeschooling was illegal in many states.Today, thanks in large part to the lawyers at theHome School Legal Defense Association, home-schooling is legal in all 50 states and the Districtof Columbia.

Some states provide nancial support for

children in nonpublic schools.Parents who choose nonpublic schools have toobtain the funds to pay for tuition and otherfees, while parents who choose public schools donot need to pay tuition. However, some statesprovide nancial support for children to attendprivate schools. Such support comes in the form

of scholarships or scholarship-like tuition assis-tance (vouchers), tax credits, and tax deductions.At the end of 2008, 14 states and the District ofColumbia provided 24 such programs, comparedto seven states and seven programs in 1997.58 Ina setback, the Obama administration and Con-gress, under pressure from teacher unions, havecut back the federally-funded D.C. Opportuni-

ty Scholarship Program for poor families in theDistrict, phasing it out by not allowing any newchildren to enroll in the program.59

Most of the parents who choose nonpublic ed-ucation forgo the thousands of dollars of freepublic education and pay for the nonpublic op-tion out of their own pockets. Thanks to the

Supreme Courts decision in Pierce v. Societyof Sisters, the government cannot force them toplace their children in government schools. Butparents who choose a nonpublic school for theirchildren usually pay a nancial penalty for theprivilege. Parents for whom this cost is an eco-

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nomic hardship must stay with the free actu-ally costly to them as taxpayers education that

the government offers in its own schools. Thatmay not seem like a problem for parents who arecontent with the schools to which their childrenhave been assigned. However, for other parents

whose children are sinking in troubled schools, itis cause for despair.

Educational choice may become increasingly at-

tractive for scalreasons. In an era of state andlocal budget decits, the savings that choice pro-grams provide may prove increasingly popular totaxpayers. As Marcus Winters of the ManhattanInstitute writes, Voucher programs both helpkids and save money. In these tight scal times,

vouchers dont just make good policy, they makegood sense.60 In Milwaukee, voucher programs

saved state and local taxpayers $37.2 million inscal year 2009. Each voucher student saved tax-payers $2,855.61 The Florida tax credit voucherprogram saved state taxpayers $36.2 million inthe 2008-09 school year.62 Under another Flor-ida choice program for children with disabilities,the cost for a voucher is much less than the cost

for special education students in public schools.A voucher in New York City would cost half orless of what City public schools spend for eachchild.63

Conclusions: Education that Serves

the Public

People of good will who are concerned about thecondition of families and the state of educationneed to think creatively and act courageously toempower parents to become more actively in-

volved in the education of their children. If theystart with a determination to put parents rst,

26 27

they can take a fresh look at old assumptions andstructures, and seek to modify the system accord-

ingly. The current educational system, createdin the early nineteenth century, is overdue for amodernization that will make it more exible,less bureaucratic, and more family-friendly. Tobe authenticallypublic, it must serve all parents

without discrimination, parents from the wholepublic, not just those whose children attend onecategory of schools.

For education to serve the public, it must giveparents access to a variety of schools, not just gov-


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28 29

ernment schools. The old system is a monopolythat is not suited to the realities of modern life.

As with other monopolies, it gives disproportion-ate weight to itself and special interests, and notenough to the customers, the parents and chil-dren, whom it is supposed to serve. Furthermore,it resists competition.

Any new system of education for the public mustleave behind the mindset that only government

schools can serve the public. Just as public ac-commodation includes private hotels and res-taurants, so too a new public education shouldinclude nongovernmental education providers.So-called private schools serve the public good

just as well as (if not better than) so-called pub-lic schools. Parents should be allowed to choosethe educational institutions that best suit their

needs.

This education reform must be accomplished ina manner that does not interfere with the free-

dom and distinctive identities of nongovernmen-tal schools.64 This is critical. Nongovernmentalschools must be able to maintain their distinc-tive religious or philosophical character, theiracademic standards, and control over hiring, cur-riculum, and admissions. A Montessori schoolshould not be required to admit a child or hirea teacher who opposes the Montessori approach.

If government funding were done in a mannerthat threatened the independence of nongovern-mental schools, they would be discouraged fromparticipation and children would lose the oppor-tunity to attend them.

Public education has come to mean governmenteducation. However, what we need today is edu-cation that serves the public: education where powerows back to parents; where empowered parentsare able to choose schools as they see t (publiccharter schools, other government schools, pri-

vate schools, homeschools, cyber schools, or otherschools yet to come); where schools of all stripesthat offer quality education are free to compete

to serve parents; where the success of schoolsdepends more on satisfying parents who freelychoose them than on pleasing bureaucracies; and

where nongovernmental schools retain their in-dependence.

This is the direction in which we must go. Butgetting there will not be easy.


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30 31

to our country and to mankind. Edmund Burke, Se-lect Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 2 (Reections on theRevolution in France) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund,1999), 55. This work is available in an online archivethrough Liberty Funds website.

5 Coleman is best known for his massive report oneducational equality for the federal government,Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966),commonly called the Coleman Report. He alsoproduced reports on school busing and white ight,on the advantages of private schools, and on a wide

range of additional topics.

6 James S. Coleman, Changes in the Family andImplications for the Common School (Chicago:University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1991), 153-168; James S. Coleman and Thomas Hoffer, Publicand Private High Schools: The Impact of Communities(New York: Basic Books, 1987), 228-231. In recent

years, sociologists and a few economists have recog-

nized that the social relations that exist in the familyor in the community outside the family also consti-tute a form of capital. These social relations gener-ate obligations, trust, and norms, all of which func-tion as resources upon which an individual can drawin time of need. While physical or nancial capitalexists wholly in tangible resources, and human capi-tal is a property of individual persons, social capital isa set of resources that resides in the relations amongpersons. All of these forms of capital are importantfor a childs education. Coleman, Changes in theFamily and Implications for the Common School,163.

7 For additional discussion of the academic benets ofreligious schools, seeWilliam Jeynes, The Academ-ic Contributions of Faith-Based Schools, Preserv-ing a Critical National Asset: Americas DisadvantagedStudents and the Crisis in Faith-based Urban Schools

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education,2008), 78-81. (Link: ) Jeynes, ofCalifornia State University at Long Beach, ndsthat minority and low-income students gain themost by attending religious schools. Religiousschools reduce the achievement gap between black

endnotes

1 Paul Peterson, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor ofGovernment, Harvard University, says that reformsin the education system since Horace Mann in thenineteenth century have shifted control of educa-tion away from parents and localities to professionalsoperating within larger legal entities large districts,collective-bargaining agreements, state govern-ments, court jurisdictions, and federal executiveagencies. Paul Peterson, Saving Schools: From Hor-

ace Mann to Virtual Learning (Cambridge: BelknapPress of Harvard University Press, 2010), 17.

2 Let it be said that whatever problems exist withinthe current educational system, there are extraordi-nary people working valiantly in it to accommodateparents. In every school district and state there areteachers who go the extra mile to work with par-ents, administrators who treat parents with respect,

and reformers who work to create parent-friendlyschools and practices. These people are heroes whodeserve our gratitude. Many of them are frustrated

with the system and bear the scars of bucking it.That is an underlying point in my analysis: the edu-cational system, as a whole, makes life difcult forthose who rock the boat whether they be parents orreform-minded educators.

3 It is ironic that so many of the people who would

ght to the death for the autonomy of inner-city par-ents to vote for the candidate they prefer, or whileusing government assistance to choose where tobuy groceries or what doctors to use for their chil-dren, would just as ercely oppose empowering thesame parents to choose the schools their children at-tend.

4 Families are among the units of society independent

of the state that Edmund Burke, the British states-man, called the little platoons of society. They areessential to civil society. To be attached to the sub-division, to love the little platoon we belong to insociety, Burke observed, is the rst principle (thegerm as it were) of public affections. It is the rstlink in the series by which we proceed towards a love


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32 33

24 Private schools were the original schools in the Brit-ish colonies and later in the newly formed UnitedStates. For many years, private schools were part ofa decentralized system of schooling that providededucation to Americans prior to the birth of themodern public school system in the middle of thenineteenth century. Historian Lawrence A. Cremin

writes: The primary accomplishment of the public-school movement of the 1840s and 1850s was obvi-ously not to initiate popular schooling. . . . Whatoccurred was a diffusion and a consolidation, but nota beginning. Lawrence A. Cremin, Traditions of

American Education, (New York: Basic Books, 1976),49-50.

25 Charles Leslie Glenn, Jr., The Myth of the CommonSchool (Amherst, Mass.: Univ. of MassachusettsPress, 1988), ix. Glenns history describes the man-ner in which the ideology of state schooling emergedand developed in France, the Netherlands, and theU.S.

26 Charles L. Glenn, Fanatical Secularism, Educa-tion Next(Winter 2003): 62 (LINK: )

27 Glenn, Fanatical Secularism, 62.

28 Glenn, Fanatical Secularism, 62.

29 Glenn, Fanatical Secularism. It is notable that

while Mann rejected Catholic or Calvinist ortho-doxy, he still included religion in the schools, how-ever, the religion was closer to his Unitarianism thanto doctrinal Christianity. Indeed, his orthodox en-emies saw Mann as undermining what was taughtin their churches and homes. The common schoolmovement itself took on religious overtones. Thehuman situation, for [Mann], was as hopeless as aCalvinist would have painted it; the signicant dif-

ference was that, for Mann, the agent of redemption was the common school. Glenn, The Myth of theCommon School, 83.

30 Glenn, The Myth of the Common School, 219 (citingCarl F. Kaestle and Maris A. Vinovskis, Educationand Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachu-setts (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980)).

and white students by 25 percent, and between highand low-income students by 25 percent. See also

William H. Jeynes, Religion, Intact Families, andthe Achievement Gap, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (Volume 3, 2007), 1-24. (Link:) See also Academic Benets of Faith-Based Schools, Preserving a Critical National Asset,6-9.

8 Coleman, Changes in the Family and Implicationsfor the Common School, 159-163.

9 Coleman, Changes in the Family and Implicationsfor the Common School, 169.

10 James S. Coleman, University of Chicagos 1985Ryerson Lecture, Schools, Families, and Children(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1985), 17.

11 Coleman, Schools, Families, and Children, 16.




15 Coleman, Schools, Families, and Children, 17-18.


17 Coleman, Schools, Families, and Children, 18(emphasis added).





22 Coleman, Schools, Families, and Children, 19(emphasis added).

23 Not so incidentally, a shift of paradigms couldthreaten jobs, status, and power.


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34 35

38 The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, What areBlaine Amendments? (Washington, D.C.: 2003)(Link: < http://www.blaineamendments.org/Intro/

whatis.html >).

39 Ku Klux Inuence Held to Be Responsible forEnactment of Compulsory School Law, New YorkTimes, Dec. 3, 1922.

40 The Oregonian, November 5, 1922 (emphasis in orig-inal).

41 Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 US 510 (1925).42 Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. at 524-527 (syl-

labus).

43 Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. at 518-519 (sylla-bus). In its brief, the parochial school quoted Pufen-dorfs Law of Nature and Nations, Take away fromthe parents all care and concern for their childrenseducation, and you make a social life an impossible

and unintelligible notion. Pierce v. Society of Sisters,268 U.S. at 518 (syllabus). The schools also arguedthat the law took away the rights of schools to oper-ate as a business and for teachers to work profession-ally.

44 Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. at 534-535 (em-phasis added).

45The Collected Dialogues of Plato

, ed. by Edith Hamil-ton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, 1961), Bk V,457d.

46 In a 1923 case in which the Supreme Court struckdown a Nebraska law prohibiting a Lutheran schoolfrom teaching German, the Court noted Platos pro-posal and Spartas practice, and vigorously rejectedsuch measures. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390,401-402 (Although such measures have been delib-

erately approved by men of great genius their ideastouching the relation between individual and state

were wholly different from those upon which ourinstitutions rest; and it hardly will be afrmed thatany Legislature could impose such restrictions uponthe people of a state without doing violence to bothletter and spirit of the Constitution.).

31 Glenn, The Myth of the Common School, 219-222.

32 Horaces three children were taught by his wife,

Mary. As a father, he fell back on the educationalresponsibilities of the family, wrote his biographer

Jonathan Messeli, hoping to make the resideachieve for his own son what he wanted the schoolsto accomplish for others. Peterson, Saving Schools,30 (quoting Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Bi-ography (New York: Knopf, 1972), 429.

33 Glenn, The Myth of the Common School, xi.

34 Glenn, The Myth of the Common School, 196-206.Lloyd P. Jorgenson, The State and the Non-PublicSchool 1825-1925 (Columbia, Mo.: Univ. of Mis-souri Press, 1987), 69-145.

35 The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, BlaineAmendments, (Washington, D.C.: 2003) (Link:); Blaine Amendments, (Washington, D.C.:

Feb. 8, 2010) (Link: < http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/article/1271.html >).

36 It was not widely appreciated until recently thatBlaine Amendments were passed as a direct resultof the nativist, anti-Catholic bigotry that was a re-curring theme in American politics during the 19thand early 20th centuries. Finally, in the SupremeCourtsMitchell v. Helms decision in 2000, the four-

Justice plurality explicitly recognized that use of theterm pervasively sectarian in law was a doctrineborn of bigotry [that] should be buried now. JusticeBreyers dissent in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris fur-ther acknowledges this tainted history. After Lockev. Davey in 2004, the court made clear that sinceBlaine Amendments have been linked with anti-Catholicism they are unique creatures that merit es-pecially close examination, suggesting that they may

be buried by the court soon. The Becket Fund forReligious Liberty, What are Blaine Amendments?(Washington, D.C.: 2003) (Link: < http://www.blaineamendments.org/Intro/whatis.html >).

37 Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002).


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36 37

tion of their children in conformity with their ownconvictions.

50 These developments came to dominate Americanpublic education in the rst half of the twentiethcentury (professionalism) and the last fty years(unionization). See Peterson, Saving Schools, 37-50(John Dewey and the Progressives) and 105-131(Albert Shanker and Collective Bargaining).

51 Peterson, Saving Schools, 45.

52 Peterson, Saving Schools, 45-49 (quote on p. 49).53 Peterson, Saving Schools, 106.

54 Peterson, Saving Schools, 114-115. The unions usethe money taken from their members for lobbying,political campaigns, and contributions to friendlyorganizations. See Mike Antonucci, The LongReach of Teachers Unions, Education Next(Fall2010), 24-31 (< http://educationnext.org/the-long-

reach-of-teachers-unions/ >).

55 Peterson, Saving Schools, 119-130.

56 Sarah Grady, Stacey Bielick, and Susan Aud, Trendsin the Use of School Choice: 1993 to 2007 (Washing-ton, D.C.: U.S. Dept of Education,National Cen-ter for Education Statistics, Institute of EducationSciences, April 2010 (Link: < http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010004.pdf >).

57 U. S. Department of Education, Institute of Edu-cation Science, National Center for EducationStatistics, Issue Brief , 1.5 Million HomeschooledStudents in the United States in 2007 (Washing-ton, D.C.: Dec. 2008) (Link: < http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf >).

58 U.S. Department of Education, Ofce of Non-

Public Education, Ofce of Innovation and Im-provement, Education Options in the States: StatePrograms That Provide Financial Assistance forAttendance at Private Elementary or SecondarySchools (Washington, D.C.: 2009).

(Link: http://www2.ed.gov/parents/schools/choice/educationoptions/index.html >).

47 Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the [Ter-ror] faction in power, told the National Conventionthat he was convinced of the necessity of operating atotal regeneration, and of creating a new people.Charles L. Glenn, Choice of Schools in Six Nations(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education,1989), 11 (quoting Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Re-public of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the FrenchRevolution (Ithica: Cornell Univ. Press, 1986), 193).

48 Glenn, Choice of Schools in Six Nations, 11 (translatedfrom Victor Pierre, Lcole sous la Rvolution fran-

caise, (Paris: Librairie de la Socit Bibliographique,1881), 86-87); the quote also appears in Glenn, TheMyth of the Common School, 22. Danton adds, It is innational schools that children must suck republicanmilk. Id. For a longer treatment of French Revo-lutionary educational practice, see Glenn, Choice of Schools, 10-20, and Glenn, The Myth of the CommonSchool, 15-37. Similarly, after Adolph Hitler and theNational Socialists took power in Germany in 1932,

the Nazis moved against private schools as part oftheir program of imposing uniformity in society.Glenn, Choice of Schools in Six Nations, 196. Foran account of the suppression of private schools inCommunist countries, seeCharles L. Glenn,Educa-tional Freedom in Eastern Europe, 2nd ed. (Washing-ton, D.C.: Cato Institution, 1995).

49 This basic right of parents to choose their childrenseducation, which the U.S. Supreme Court recog-nized in the Piercecase, has also been recognized bythe United Nations and other international bodies.

The UNs Universal Declaration of Human Rightsstates: Parents have a prior right to choose the kindof education that shall be given to their children.

The International Covenant on Economic, Socialand Cultural Rights pledges respect for the libertyof parents to choose for their children schools,other than those established by the public authori-

ties, which conform to such minimum educationalstandards as may be laid down or approved by theState and to ensure the religious and moral educa-tion of their children in conformity with their ownconvictions. The International Covenant on Civiland Political Rights pledges respect for the liberty ofparents to ensure the religious and moral educa-


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38 39

sults for about $5,500 per urban elementary schoolstudent and $8,500 per high schooler. Jay P. Greeneand Patrick J. McCloskey, The Uses of Vouchers,City Journal (July 29, 2009)(Link: < http://www.city-journal.org/2009/nytom_school-choice.html>).

64 As the Council for American Private Educationnoted in an issue paper responding to the move-ment for unied standards, The right of parentsto choose an education for their children consistent

with their beliefs and values should never be com-

promised through an attempt to standardize school-ing. CAPE Issue Paper, School Accreditation,(Germantown, Md.: Council for American PrivateEducation, March 2010) (Link: ).

59 The reason for the setback of the D.C. Opportu-nity Scholarship Program is not that parents dislikedthe program. (they strongly supported it) or that itsevaluations were negative (they were good ), but be-cause of politics and the muscle of teacher unions.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, whichis being phased out, is the only federal program thatprovides tuition assistance at private elementary orsecondary schools. The U.S. Department of Edu-cation has other programs that provide services toprivate school students and teachers but not scholar-ships or other forms of assistance for tuition.

60 Marcus A. Winters: School Vouchers Make a GreatRecession-era Program, Washington Examiner(September 8, 2010) (Link: < http://www.washing-tonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Marcus-A-

Winters-School-vouchers-make-a-great-recession-era-program-102420929.html >).

61 Robert M. Costrell, The Fiscal Impact of the Mil-

waukee Parental Choice Program: 2009 Update.SCDP Milwaukee Evaluation Report #7 (March2009), 1-6 (link: < http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED508637.pdf>).

62 A voucher under Floridas tax-credit program is worth $3,950, compared with the $11,077 cost ofsending the average student to a public school in thestate. Marcus A. Winters: School vouchers make agreat recession-era program.

63 Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas and theManhattan Institute, who has conducted evaluationsof the Florida voucher program for children withdisabilities and other choice programs, writes that,at a time of budget pressure, special-ed voucherscould end up saving taxpayers money In Florida,for instance, where a special-ed voucher program isalready operating, the average cost of a voucher for

disabled students is $7,206far below what taxpay-ers spend for the average special-ed student in publicschool. Patrick McCloskey, author of The StreetStops Here, says that vouchers in New York Citywould save money, too, since the public school sys-tem spends about $20,000 annually on each student,

while the Catholic schools achieve their superior re-


22/22

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Who Should Decide How Children Are Educated?