Common Ground on School Choice?

March 01, 2006

[The following remarks were delivered February 14 at a workshop sponsored by the left-leaning Oklahoma Conference of Churches.]

I appreciate the Oklahoma Conference of Churches extending me an invitation to be here today because, let's face it, I represent a point of view that's probably different from most of yours. I'm politically conservative, so I don't often line up with Laura [Boyd, the workshop's co-conductor] or perhaps many of you. But that's OK - I want to say I very much appreciate the theme of today's meeting: "Building Common Ground." I hope we're able to do that, and I think it might be possible if you just think of me as a broken clock. I'm sure you know that even a broken clock is right twice a day, so it's possible that even though I'm wrong on tax cuts and Medicaid reform and TABOR, I might have some sensible ideas on education. It's worth exploring.

Just to show you that I'm serious about building common ground, if I can flaunt my ecumenical bona fides here for a moment, I want you to know that I once co-authored an editorial column with none other than Nathaniel Batchelder [an Oklahoma City liberal who runs The Peace House]. It's true. It was published in The Oklahoman. I have signed coalition letters where my signature was right next to the guy from the ACLU. It doesn't happen very often, but it is possible on certain issues to build common ground.

That's what I want to try to do on education. Laura talked a lot about public schools, but in my brief remarks I want to suggest to you that parents should have the right and the ability to choose for their children the safest and best schools, whether those schools are public or private. OK, that's my message. Let me repeat it: Parents should have the right and the ability to choose for their children the safest and best schools, whether those schools are public or private.

I don't want to talk a lot about the public policy mechanism for getting there. Some people prefer school vouchers. I'm not a big fan of vouchers, but I would like to see tax credits for parents who pay tuition, and also tax credits for people who donate to K-12 scholarship funds that provide tuition assistance to low-income children. Whatever the mechanism, parents should be given the ability to choose.

A Fundamental Human Right
Why is this so important? Charles Glenn, a professor of education at Boston University and a former education bureaucrat for Gov. Michael Dukakis, has articulated a very important truth. Parents have a fundamental human right - a fundamental human right - "to choose the schooling that will shape their children's understanding of the world. But a right isn't really a right if it can't be exercised."

Think about that. Think about how important it is to shape your children's understanding of the world. It's right up there with food, clothing, and shelter. What could be more important?

Now, I think most people are more-or-less satisfied with the shaping that occurs in most of our schools. The prevailing view seems to be, "Let's teach the kids history and science and math - the neutral facts - and then they can get the religious stuff from their parents or in Sunday school." That's certainly a popular view, and there's no shortage of public schools and secular private schools which operate that way.

However, there are many parents who don't want their children's understanding shaped that way. Consider: the Oklahoma Conference of Churches is a statewide community of churches that "confess Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of all." I commend the Conference for that. As a father, I teach my children that Christ isn't merely Lord in Sunday school; He's Lord in Monday-through-Friday school, too. God and his Word are the interpretive principle of all things, including all academic disciplines. I teach my children, as the greatest commandment says, to love God with all their minds. Christ is indeed Lord of all.

Thankfully, in God's providence I have the necessary resources to shape my children's understanding of the world, Monday through Friday, in the way that I think is best. But not everyone does. And since the theme of today's meeting is "Building Common Ground: Visions of Social Responsibility [emphasis added] for People of Faith," I want to appeal to you on social-justice grounds.

School Choice - If You Can Afford It
I live in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Edmond. And I have to tell you: In my neighborhood, school choice is everywhere. There are kids in my neighborhood going to Oklahoma Christian School, Casady, St. Elizabeth's, Heritage Hall, Bishop McGuiness, and who knows how many other private schools. Some children in the neighborhood, such as my own, are homeschooled. People in our neighborhood have the right and (to a large extent) the ability to choose whatever they want.

Of course, many of my neighbors are exercising an even more common form of school choice: real-estate-based school choice. Despite the higher home prices and property taxes in Edmond, many people move there so their kids can go to Edmond's public schools.

I'm very happy these parents have a choice. Choice is good. Unfortunately, not everyone in Oklahoma can afford to exercise their right to choose.

Did you know that federal data tell us that two-thirds of Okla-homa's black fourth-graders, and half of our Hispanic fourth-graders, cannot read at a basic level? They cannot comprehend a simple paragraph in a children's story. Do you think any African-American parents in northeast Oklahoma City would like to choose a better school for their children? Do you think any Hispanic parents want to send their children to a school where they can learn in a safe, nurturing, drug-free environment?

Many parents (of all races) would love to send their children to a private school, but they can't afford the tuition. They might want to send their children to Edmond North High School, but they can't afford a home in north Edmond. So their kids are stuck in bad schools.

Where's the social justice in all this? Why should school choice be limited to those who can afford it? The Clintons and the Gores sent their kids to private schools. Multimillionaire senators like Kennedy and Rockefeller - do you think their children would ever darken the door of a public school? Imagine my surprise when I read in The Oklahoman a few years ago that one wealthy corporate executive, who happens to be the chairman of the Oklahoma City school board (for crying out loud), sent his children to private schools. Let's face it: School choice is widespread. Unless you're poor.

A few years ago I interviewed civil-rights activist Martin Luther King III. He said, "Education is the key to freedom and opportunity. We basically have one supplier, the public education system, and it has become a huge bureaucracy. This bureaucracy has to be challenged. Fairness demands that every child, not just the rich, has access to an education that will help them achieve their dreams. [We must] increase equal access to private education."

This is what I tell my friends on the left: You should be promoting school choice on social-justice grounds and human-rights grounds. As Professor Glenn says, "It is on the basis of this fundamental human right ? that virtually all the other Western democracies provide public funding to non-government schools that meet public standards that are selected freely by parents." Even parents in former communist countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary can use public money to pay for nonpublic schools.

Charles Wheelan, a former correspondent for The Economist magazine, says candidly: "We Democrats are on the wrong side of the school choice issue. From a social justice standpoint, the essence of 'public' education is that the government provides an opportunity for all students to attend a decent school, not that all students must attend a publicly operated school. Do we argue that the spirit of Medicare has been compromised because the system uses private hospitals and doctors?"

I realize that most of the education policy debates at the capitol are focused on the public school system. I am suggesting that instead of talking about the system we should be talking about the children, and that parents should have the right and the ability to choose for their children whatever school they think is best.

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