All
Schools Are Public Schools
A case for state aid to
private education and homeschooling parents
by Jason Boffetti
Foreword by Robert Royal
Chapter One: How We Got "Public"
Schools
Chapter Two: Private Schools, Public Good
Chapter Three: Funding All Schools
Every year, roughly six million children, about 10 percent of K-12 students, attend private schools. In the 1999-2000 school year, another 1.7 million were being home schooled, reflecting a steady 10 to 15 percent annual growth in that movement since 1985. In 1999, the Children’s Scholarship Fund had to turn away an additional 1.2 million applicants for the 42,000 partial scholarships it can currently provide. As these figures demonstrate, the parents of nearly one in six American children have decided that their needs cannot be met in our current system of public education, despite the sacrifices they have to make if they choose an alternative—and their numbers continue to grow.
What
has been the response to this massive vote of no-confidence?
Politicians, school administrators, and teachers’ unions
have decided to batten down the hatches instead of facing
reality. They claim that any attempt to make the plight of these
parents easier is an attack on public schools. In their view, all
public financing of education must be earmarked for
government-run schools—whatever the track record of those
institutions and the judgments of parents intimately involved
with them. That millions of children are thereby condemned to
poor instruction and, in all likelihood, diminished life
prospects does not seem to trouble these self-styled champions of
public education.
Jason Boffetti, a talented young scholar, offers a different vision in these pages. He urges us to realize a simple fact: all schools are public schools, because any institution that provides a good education and necessary social skills to its students performs a public function that should be supported with public monies. Unlike those on the other side, Boffetti sees a role for various approaches to education. Some public schools are good, and others can be reformed, he says. But public goods do not come only from institutions that are government-run. We need to take a much more flexible and imaginative approach to educating children. We did so in the past in America, as he shows, before our attitudes about schooling narrowed to produce the current crisis. And we could do so again if the public, education lobbies, politicians, and the courts recognize the public office that “private” methods of schooling fulfill.
Indeed, not only do alternatives to public schools provide equivalent training, they exceed their public counterparts, even in some of the worst circumstances America has to offer at the start of the twenty-first century. Boffetti uses Catholic schools in the inner city as a crucial case study. Those schools draw mostly poor and minority students from the very urban environments most worrisome to anyone who considers education today. Yet by an integrated emphasis on study, good conduct, and shared values, these schools are able to counteract the pernicious influence of chaotic neighborhoods and teach children skills far beyond the level of their peers in public schools.
Home schooling—once thought a marginal and mildly eccentric enterprise—has demonstrated similar power. The three top finishers in the 2000 National Spelling Bee were home schooled, as were 11 percent of the contestants. The winner of that contest had placed second the week before in the National Geography Bee. And he was not an exception. Students taught at home do significantly better on the ACT assessment test than the national average. And these results have come despite attitudes towards home schooling that range from derision to outright hostility, and attempts to curtail it by law.
Boffetti encourages us to weigh all types of educational reform fairly. Instead of opposing alternatives that can make a difference in the lives of young children who cannot wait a decade or two for public schools to improve, he argues, we should take advantage of any opportunity we can to tackle this difficult problem. Though it may appear at first that alternative education is trying to divert resources from public schools, in fact, competition among religious, secular, and government-run schools will benefit all students in the long run. Indeed, Boffetti warns that if government funding leads to interference in the religious or social mission of private schools, those schools should reject it as threatening the distinctive features that made them successful. This sophisticated and comprehensive essay appears at exactly the right time as the incoming Bush administration begins its efforts at persuading Congress and the public to embrace education reform.
Training good citizens is the public purpose all schools serve, whether we call them public or private. We have been mired for too long in a sterile debate about which schools will benefit from reform proposals. Boffetti recasts the debate so that it focuses on its proper goal: children. If we truly want the best for them, and ultimately for our nation, we will help parents choose the best education currently available from whatever source.
Robert
Royal
President
The Faith and Reason Institute
Copies of the monograph All Schools Are Public Schools are available. See ordering page for details.
Faith
& Reason Institute
666 Eleventh St. NW, Suite 450
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 289-8775
(202) 393-7004 F
info@frinstitute.org
Home