Empowering Parents: How School Choice Can Revolutionize American Education
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The article discusses the decline in American education, tracing its roots to secularism and progressive reforms that have shaped the current system. It highlights the failure of numerous reform efforts and advocates for school choice as a solution. School choice would empower parents to select the best educational options for their children, including private schools, homeschooling, and charter schools, while addressing financial barriers. The article argues that competition, innovation, and a return to biblical principles in education are essential for improvement. It calls for greater support for school choice legislation and for parents to reclaim control over their children’s education.
The article discusses the decline in American education, tracing its roots to secularism and progressive reforms that have shaped the current system. It highlights the failure of numerous reform efforts and advocates for school choice as a solution. School choice would empower parents to select the best educational options for their children, including private schools, homeschooling, and charter schools, while addressing financial barriers. The article argues that competition, innovation, and a return to biblical principles in education are essential for improvement. It calls for greater support for school choice legislation and for parents to reclaim control over their children’s education.By Jonathan Copeland
Just the mention of the word millionaire induces imaginations of the lifestyle that amount of money can provide. Those visions become more extravagant when considering the discretionary funds available to a billionaire. Pause for a moment and ponder the purchasing power of $794.7 billion. That amount of money is spent on educating children (K5-12th grade) every year in America, an average of over $16,000 per student. Because schools do not actually spend 100 percent of the money they receive, the total cost to federal, state and local governments is $810 billion.[1]
Despite this massive amount of spending, the quality of education received by American students continues to decline. This trend is not new. It began soon after Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” arrived in America by steamboat in 1859. Although initially criticized on scientific and religious grounds, Darwin’s anti-biblical ideas eventually were accepted by the intelligentsia of American society including John Dewey, the early 20th century reformer often called the Father of American Progressive Education. He applied evolutionary theory to the educational system based upon his conviction “there is no God and there is no soul.”[2] Dewey championed the efforts of the Soviet Union to indoctrinate students with a collectivist mindset and referred to schools as the “ideological arm of the Revolution,” describing their purpose as nothing less than the destruction of the family and the church.[3]
During the decade of the 1960s, the Supreme Court systematically removed prayer and Bible reading from the classroom. Since that time, student performance in America by every academic measure has plummeted, while rates of crime and other sinful activities have dramatically risen. As far back as 1983, the federal government was well aware of the problem. U.S. Secretary of Education T. H. Bell established the National Commission on Excellence in Education to “present a report on the quality of education in America.” Their findings, presented to the public as “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform,” concluded, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”[4]
A Litany of Failed Solutions
Since that call for action, many reform efforts have been touted as the solution to our nation’s faltering educational system. Whether it be Common Core, No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top, all of the so-called solutions have done nothing more than exacerbate the problem. The answer is not an increase of funding, nor another cleverly titled congressional action that will benefit only the cadre of educational experts who are always paid handsomely to translate, implement and then later diagnose the failure of each new government program. Despite all the recent hyperbole concerning the supposed systemic problems in American society, the true systemic issue is not racism but rather an educational system built upon the shifting sands of a nonbiblical foundation. Alex Newman and Samuel Blumenfeld pinpointed the true source of the problem in “Crimes of the Educators,” a scathing indictment of the American public educational system published in 2014: “While today’s public schools have no choice but to live with school shootings and student suicide, one thing they will not tolerate is the Holy Bible in their classrooms, for one simple reason: the entire progressive curriculum is based upon the theory of evolution.” They further explain, “Growing levels of illiteracy, plunging international ratings, the decline of critical thinking skills, mushrooming decadence, mass shootings, and companies that can’t find the skilled workers they need – those have become some of the atrocious hallmarks of U.S. public schools.”[5]
In the decade following those insightful observations, the situation has grown increasingly worse. We are currently living in an era of revolutionary activism far more dangerous than any previous attempts to destroy America from within. The attack comes from all sides. The hoax of climate change is presented as evidence that world government, disguised as the United Nations, is the only way to save humanity. Proponents of queer theory use class time to advocate that students experiment with alternative lifestyles as a shortcut to happiness and resistance to recognizing them as valid is evidence of moral failure. Critical Race Theory has been rebranded to increase diversity, equity and inclusion but it actually promotes racial strife and isolation while enforcing the need to celebrate mediocrity and punish excellence. The common goal of all these efforts is to destroy the fabric of the traditional American society, a coordinated push for a Marxist cultural revolution using the public schools as a breeding ground for the next generation of activists. Without addressing the core issue of such an unbiblical philosophy, the educational system that once was the envy of the entire world will never be corrected by governmental tinkering, the proverbial rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic. The only hope for real change is a radical shift away from the government having a virtual monopoly upon education.
A Potential Solution
Americans are very familiar with the freedom to choose. To a large extent, all people in this nation are free to decide where to live, where to worship, what kind of vehicle to drive and what type of occupation best utilizes their skills to better society and provide for their families. However, one decision that is very often overlooked is the choice of how to educate our children. For decades, the vast majority of the American population has ignored the biblical mandate to “train up a child in the way he should go,” instead, trusting a government-run institution with this sacred responsibility (Proverbs 22:6). Often, unsuspecting parents are not aware of the damaging effect that decision has upon the spiritual foundation of the children they love. Political commentator Mark Levin has observed, “Many parents who send their children to government-mandated schools … are often appalled to see the transformation of their children from what they were raised to believe as part of a family, to what they have been indoctrinated to believe as part of a third-party indoctrination effort and ideological movement.”[6]
Perhaps one of the very few silver linings of the recent pandemic occurred when education broke out of the four walls of the schoolhouse and invaded the homes of Americans via Zoom and other video conferencing software. Many parents, for the very first time, were able to see what has been happening for decades in the American classroom. Countless moms and dads shuddered at the thought of times they had demanded their children “listen to what the teacher says.” The result was a significant increase in the number of children homeschooled and enrolled in private education alternatives. Unfortunately, in a society that has been overrun by demands for equity and inclusion, far too often the less affluent have discovered that such opportunities are not viable for them. When both parents work full-time to make ends meet or a single father or mother is struggling to support their family, a lack of financial resources often excludes children from receiving an education that is anywhere close to being equitable with the type students receive at the very expensive prep schools serving the elites of American society. The never-ending onslaught of inflation caused by reckless government spending only adds fuel to that fire.
What can America do to solve this problem? Is there a way to save both taxpayer dollars and the next generation? It has been several years since Irvin Baxter wrote an article for this magazine entitled “Can School Choice Save America?” The answer to that question is yes and we are closer than ever before to seeing that solution fully implemented.
What is School Choice?
School choice is commonly defined as “giving parents access to the best K-12 education options for their children … [including] traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling.” [7] While all parents in America technically have some level of access to at least a portion of these options, the financial barriers to the real freedom to choose are often insurmountable. Moreover, parents who make the sacrifices to select an alternative to public school are punished for this decision because they incur the cost of tuition and/or curriculum while also being assessed the same tax rate as families who send their children to public school.
Countless examples in history show us that most anything the government can do poorly, the private sector can do more effectively and more efficiently. The school choice movement is a growing understanding that this principle can and should be applied to education. Many states are adopting legislation that places the power to choose in the hands of parents by providing vouchers to any parent who elects not to send their child to the public school system. While the amounts of these vouchers vary from state to state, the basic idea is the same: return to parents a portion of the tax money spent to educate their children and trust them to decide how that money would best be spent. Most often, parents opt to either pay for a private school education or purchase materials necessary to effectively homeschool their children.
How can the Government Afford This?
Some proponents of the school choice movement have advocated for the same amount of money spent by the government to educate a child be given to the parents to select their own means of providing an education. However, what has been demonstrably proven in recent years is that the actual cost of providing an education is far less than what the government currently spends. That amount varies by state with New York spending the most ($30,300 per student each year) and Idaho the least ($8,784 per student each year).[8] Virtually any parent in any state would be able to properly fund an excellent education for their child with either of these amounts of money.
For that reason, states that have adopted school choice initiatives have discovered vouchers can be provided to parents at a far lower cost than what is spent in the bureaucracy of public school. Once the influence of teacher unions and governmental in-fighting is removed, it takes much less than $16,000 per year to provide a child with an excellent education. The only real losers in the scenario are the teacher unions, the very organizations which openly explain they exist to serve only the best interests of teachers, not students and families. Most Americans are willing to accept this type of collateral damage if the beneficiaries of change are the next generation of Americans currently being served so poorly in the public school system.
The Benefit of Competition in America’s Educational System
While economic concerns may be a driving force in the school choice movement, it is not the only justification for a change. Even parents who decide not to take advantage of a voucher system benefit from those who do because the introduction of competition into the educational system of America is greatly needed to stimulate innovation. Far too often, tenured teachers given a guarantee of employment and pension as long as they show up to work and avoid illegal activity are not motivated to do much else. In the 17 years that I worked as a teacher in the public school system, I encountered many examples of teachers simply riding the clock until retirement and others more concerned with being the “cool teacher” than whether students actually learned anything. Perhaps the worst example is the teacher who gave every student an 88 on progress reports because he considered it the perfect grade. When asked why, the response was, “Because everyone will think that if they work just a little bit harder, they will get an A.” Students may have loved him but they learned little more than how to game the system.
That type of behavior will continue as long as there is no true competition. When a family with an average income is given the opportunity to make a legitimate choice as to what type of environment is best suited for the educational needs of their children, things will change very quickly. More churches will be empowered to start private schools, more parents will be able to consider the possibility of homeschooling and more local school boards will instantly become responsive to the voices of parents who will be able to fire them without waiting for an election season. As Irvin Baxter once correctly observed, school choice “would create free-market style competition among schools … [causing] inferior schools to improve or face extinction.” He further explained, “We have learned from communism what happens when ill-managed and incompetent businesses are not allowed to fail. Yet this is exactly the way American education has been run for years.”
The Bible was Right All Along
No governmental solution to our flawed educational system has ever attempted to address the true source of the problem. While every candidate for any office in America promises they will once and for all “fix education,” throwing more money at the problem and hiring an independent team of experts have always made matters worse. The real answer can be found by examining what American schools were doing when they were successful.
In the Founding era, the key to the success of American schools was the fact they promoted biblical principles. Consider the words of Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the surgeon general of the Continental Army and also the father of public schools under the Constitution: “[T]he Bible … should be read in our schools in preference to all other books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.” He also said, “The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.”[9]
Noah Webster, the brilliant scholar who is famous for giving us the very first American dictionary, declared emphatically that education was “useless without the Bible.” He also identified the Word of God as “America’s basic textbook in all fields.”[10] Because “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” any educational system that promotes atheism and secularism is destined to fail (Proverbs 1:7).
These truths are not isolated to only the Founding era; they have been understood by most generations of Americans including Robert Winthrop, a Speaker of the House of Representatives who in 1849 said in a speech to the Massachusetts Bible Society: “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”[11] Unfortunately, the graduates of American high schools today have typically been trained to accept the bayonet of government instead of governing themselves by the Word of God.
The school choice movement offers hope to families who wish to remove their children from environments which “destroy the children’s belief in religious morality by teaching moral relativism and values clarification that lead many children into immoral, antisocial behavior.” They seek to instill biblical principles instead of “constantly training [students] to believe the Lord is a myth and that life, aside from the hedonistic pursuit of physical pleasure, has no meaning or purpose.” The sanctity of human life and immortal value of a soul should be emphasized, not the underlying indoctrination “that humanity is essentially a plague on this earth, causing global warming, species loss, destruction of the environment, and on and on.”[12] It is time for a nation built upon such a strong biblical foundation to empower parents to be able to decide if this type of indoctrination is best for their family and our nation. To a large extent, America is finally waking up to woke ideology and returning to her biblical roots.
The Current State of the School Choice Movement
Many states are passing or considering legislation that would place power back into the hands of those who should be most concerned with the educational needs of children: the parents. In 2023 alone, “a record 20 states said, ‘yes’ to expanding school choice [by implementing or] getting ready to implement programs that will likely enroll millions of students.”[13] During that year, a total of eight states (Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah) “adopted universal or near-universal eligibility, bringing to ten the number of states with universal programs.”[14]
The turn of the calendar to 2024 shows no sign of this trend slowing down. As of the writing of this article, a total of 117 school choice bills have been either introduced or prefiled, the vast majority of which seek to broaden the options parents have for choice.[15] The most drastic step toward righting the educational ship of state occurred in Tennessee, where legislators have openly discussed the possibility of passing a provision that would reject all federal funding of education, releasing the state from many of the mandates required by federal programs.
Many may not even be aware the Federal Department of Education is a very recent creation established in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. Its existence allows the federal government to use the threat of withholding funding to force a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach onto the individual states, something the Constitution was designed to prevent. It is interesting to note that William Foster, the national chairman of the Communist Party of the United States, called for the creation of a U.S. Department of Education all the way back in 1935 in his book entitled, “Toward Soviet America.”[16]
What’s Next?
If you are a parent of a school-aged child, the time is now to develop a plan to remove them from governmental indoctrination as soon as possible. Additionally, one of the most effective actions that can be taken by everyone reading this article is prayer. Petition God not only for the educational needs of your family and those in your circle of influence but for those you have never met. Every child that is removed from the indoctrination of the current American public school is a net advantage for the future of this nation and a step toward us fulfilling our God-given destiny. It has often been said “it takes a village to raise a child.” What most who repeat that mantra often mean is it requires a government subsidized bureaucracy to brainwash American children into thinking they are citizens of the world instead of realizing they are blessed to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Spiritual warfare will be required to defeat the enemy pushing this harmful narrative designed to coax America into bowing her knee to the edicts of the Antichrist’s coming one-world government.
Next, you can invest the time necessary to research candidates who advocate for school choice and consider that as a significant factor in whether they receive your vote. Become an advocate in your state for school choice. The Hoover Institute has an excellent resource available for checking to see the progress of the school choice movement in your state: https://www.hoover.org/schoolchoicemap. Another great resource is the legislation tracker found here: https://www.future-ed.org/legislative-tracker-2024-state-private-school-choice-bills/. This website updates the bills currently in progress and provides external links to the authors of these bills. It will allow you to discover if your state representatives and governor are for or against the initiative to clarify the educational rights of parents in your state.
Finally, continue to support Endtime Ministries, strong advocates of the school choice movement. Stay updated on new developments in the school choice movement by subscribing to the Classical American Education Podcast available on all major podcast platforms. Share your story and your questions with the author of this article by sending an email to: classicalamericaned@powg.org.
[1] Hanson, Melanie. “U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics” EducationData.org, September 8, 2023, https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics
[2] Dewey, J. “Soul-Searching,” Teacher Magazine (September 1933), 33.
[3] Levin, Mark R. American Marxism. Threshold Editions, 2021.
[4] https://edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/A_Nation_At_Risk_1983.pdf
[5] Blumenfeld, Samuel L., and Alex Newman. Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy American’s Children. World Net Daily Books, 2014.
[6] Levin, Mark R. American Marxism. Threshold Editions, 2021.
[7] National School Choice Week (2024) Homepage │ https://schoolchoiceweek.com/
[8] Hanson, Melanie. “U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics” EducationData.org, September 8, 2023, https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics
[9] Wallbuilders (2023) The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible │ wallbuilders.com https://wallbuilders.com/resource/the-founding-fathers-on-jesus-christianity-and-the-bible/
[10] George, Anita. (n. d.) Noah Webster. │ https://websternoah.weebly.com/ https://websternoah.weebly.com/education.html
[11] Foster, Marshall. The American Covenant: The Untold Story. Ventura, CA: Nordskog Publishing, 2021.
[12] Blumenfeld, Samuel L., and Alex Newman. Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy American’s Children. World Net Daily Books, 2014.
[13] National School Choice Week (2024) Homepage │ https://schoolchoiceweek.com/
[14] Future Ed (2024) Legislative Tracker: 2024 State Private-School Choice Bills │ www.future-ed.org https://www.future-ed.org/legislative-tracker-2024-state-private-school-choice-bills/
[15] Ibid.
[16] Foster, William. Toward Soviet America. London: Forgotten Books, 2015.