(RNS) — Our children are grown now with families of their own, but when they were young, my wife and I enrolled them, as did thousands of observant Jewish parents and more than 2 million Catholic parents, in religious schools. In the Jewish schools our children attended, they underwent a dual curriculum of secular and religious studies.
The taxes religious Americans pay fund their local public schools, but of course we paid separately for the ones we had chosen. There were no voucher or tax credit programs then that could help us cover their tuitions. We considered the studies and values our children would be offered in Jewish environments to be vital to their lives. To us, offering them a Jewish education was not only our right but our responsibility. Religious Christian parents made similar choices for their children.
Many American parents — religious or not — are seeking to educate their children in ways that honor their values, outside public schools. More than 6 million kindergarten-through-grade 12 students are enrolled in private schools, and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, another 4.3 million children are being home-schooled this year, up from 3.7 million in 2023.
While the debate over school choice has been politically polarized, like much else in our national conversation, parents who consider religion central to their children’s lives voted on both sides of the recent election. They have reason to feel hopeful that a federal school choice bill, modeled on existing scholarship programs in many states and localities, will be enacted in the near future.
Candidates supporting school choice won in Texas and Tennessee, and President-elect Donald Trump has publicly embraced the idea that parents should be permitted to choose their children’s schools. One of his platform pledges was “to protect the God-given right of every parent to be the steward of their children’s education, and he nominated Linda McMahon to be secretary of education, specifically to “fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America” (upper-case oddities his).
Linda McMahon speaks during an America First Policy Institute gala at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
On X, McMahon herself averred that school choice “will level the playing field by breaking down barriers of Economic Disadvantage and offering parents CONTROL over their children’s education” (caps, here, as well, in the original).
Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education in the first Trump administration, also championed school choice. But Congress then stood in the way. Ms. McMahon will not face the same hurdles.
Jim Blew, assistant secretary of the Department of Education under Devos, sees the incoming Congress as likely to embrace a national school choice program. “The new members,” he told The Associated Press in the days after the election, “are all very clearly supportive of school choice, and I think that’s going to change the dynamics.”
There was a time, not terribly long ago, when the idea of public funds in any way enabling American students to attend religious private schools was anathema. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, it was assumed and proclaimed, prohibited even indirect support for faith institutions.
But in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, upheld an Ohio educational program that offered economically disadvantaged parents vouchers for use at whatever schools they chose for their children. The majority in the 5-4 decision held that the program did not violate the establishment clause as long as funds were given to parents, not schools, and the recipients were able to choose among a range of both secular and religious places of learning.
At the time, The Wall Street Journal called the decision the greatest blow “for equal public education since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954…” as it “stripped away the last Constitutional and moral fig leaf from those who want to keep minority kids trapped in failing public schools.”
That comment well captured an important aspect of school choice laws: that they will help children enrolled in public schools as well as those whose parents choose private schools for their kids. Not only because those children “trapped” in public school will have other options, but because the very existence of educational alternatives compels public schools to do better jobs. Competition fuels improvement in education no less than in the marketplace.
Public school teachers’ unions have fought against school choice programs and will fight future efforts. But school choice expanded on a national level will, in the end, have positive effects not only on private school students but on those in public schools as well.
There are different approaches to enabling parents to choose their children’s schools. There are voucher programs, like those that currently operate in a number of states and the District of Columbia, but also other educational aid programs in other states in the form of educational savings accounts or tax credit scholarships.
An example of the latter is federal school choice legislation that is currently stalled in Congress but which may well progress in 2025. It will allow individuals who donate to local or state scholarship groups to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for doing so.
Studies of existing school choice programs’ effects on student success have yielded different results. But 84% of nearly 200 studies have shown a positive effect. And, surprisingly, the fiscal impact of such programs has also been positive. That’s because public schools cost an average of over $17,000 per student annually, while the average cost to taxpayers for students in school choice programs is approximately one-third of that.
But the most compelling case for providing parents with educational options isn’t that it will yield greater academic achievement or that it will swell tax coffers; it is simply that allowing mothers and fathers to choose how their children are educated is the proper thing to do.
In a pluralistic society like ours, where parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit within the bounds of law, it’s only fair that mothers and fathers should have the ability to provide their children with an education that reflects their own values and ideals.
And it’s only fair that, if government is to fund education, it respect the choices of those parents — parents like the children my wife and I raised, who are today raising their own children the same way, to be well-educated in science and math and history, but also to be knowledgeable and responsible observant Jews.
Schools are intended to be in loco parentis, “in the place of a parent.” American parents, of whatever religion or of no religion at all, deserve the right to choose schools that fill that role and reflect their personal ideals and values.
(Rabbi Avi Shafran writes widely in Jewish and general media and blogs at rabbishafran.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)