Public Education and its Alternatives
The data and arguments supporting public education vs. homeschooling and private, religious, and charter schools.
Background
The data presented by National Review, citing RealClear Opinion Research, shows that about 75% of Americans support school choice. “Hispanic Americans were most supportive of school choice (77 percent), followed closely by white respondents (72 percent), black respondents (70 percent), and Asian respondents (66 percent).” (Desanctis 2022)
According to Forbes, legislation to expand school choice, including creating publicly funded vouchers and scholarships to help parents send their kids to private religious schools, was introduced in 27 states in 2022, up from 19 in 2021.
Religious schools are gaining legal traction in their quest to gain access to public funds, the number of students being homeschooled went up more than 5x during the pandemic, and Conservatives are furious at public education’s teaching of gender ideology education and Critical Race Theory. Parents have protested at school board meetings and run campaigns to take over school board positions. Some of the protestors made threats against teachers and board members, leading The National Association of School Boards (NASB) to liken parents' objections to woke school boards as 'a form of domestic terrorism,’ which led to Conservatives accusing the Left of weaponizing the Dept. of Justice against legitimate protest. Rightwing advocates went on the offensive with tools, such as Libsoftiktok, to paint public education as a threat to everyone’s children.
SCOTUS -
“Last year (2020), in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Supreme Court ruled that although states are not required to subsidize private education, states that choose to do so cannot exclude religious schools from receiving funding simply because they are religious. In Carson v. Makin, the justices will take up a question that they did not resolve in Espinoza: Does a state violate the Constitution when it operates a program that provides students with money to attend private schools but bars them from attending schools that provide religious instruction?” (Howe 2021)
Costs -
Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States in 2017–18 amounted to $762 billion, or $14,891 per public school pupil enrolled in the fall (NCES 2022)
Tuition at private schools cost, on average, “$11,004 a year but can range anywhere from $7,000 to $25,180.” (Lindenberger 2021)
Size -
Number of schools, according to Riser-Kositsky (2022):
Traditional public schools: 91,328 (2018-19, Source)
Public charter schools: 7,427 (2018-19, Source)
Private schools: 32,461 (2017-18, Source)
Concern that More Private Schools Will Damage Public Schools -
The worry is that if more parents opt out of public education, the fewer resources public schools will get. If enough students leave, schools may close and teachers may find that their unions are less powerful and their pay and benefits would decrease, driving many from the field. However, many parents, especially those in inner cities, want to be able to take their children, and their children’s tax dollars, to schools that they believe will better prepare them for the future.
These financial worries may be overblown, as attempts to pay for students to attend private schools through Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) has survived court challenges in multiple states. Not all funds leave when students transfer from public to private schools, and according to Forbes, in response to critics who are argue that,
“reforms providing and expanding parental choice in education “could further weaken traditional schools.” Yet parental choice proponents counter such claims by pointing to 27 studies examining how private school choice programs affect public schools, of which 25 found that public schools have better outcomes in places where there are parental choice programs.”
Benefits of public schools
Teachers -
Public school teachers are protected by public unions, and privatization can lead to drastic decrease in teacher pay and benefits. Public teachers make more money, are evaluated more, and have more advanced degrees.
Salary. Regular full-time teachers in public schools had a higher average base salary ($57,900) than regular full-time teachers in private schools ($45,300) in the 2017–18 school year. (NCES 2020)
Evaluation. In the 2017–18 school year, 78 percent of public school teachers and 69 percent of private school teachers were evaluated during the last school year. (NCES 2020)
Degrees and Professional Development. The public school teachers also have a higher percentage of master’s degrees — 48 percent compared to 36 percent in private schools. Also, more public school teachers participate in some form of professional development every year than private school teachers do. (Lindenberger 2021)
Race and ethnicity shows slightly more diversity in public schools. Seventy-nine percent of all public school teachers in the 2017–18 school year were non-Hispanic White, 7 percent were non-Hispanic Black, and 9 percent were Hispanic. Among private school teachers, 85 percent were non-Hispanic White, 3 percent were non-Hispanic Black, and 7 percent were Hispanic. (NCES 2020)
Infrastructure already exists -
Busses, schools, programs, etc. are already operational for public schools.
Separation of church and state -
79% of private schools are religious in nature, with Catholic schools holding the lion’s share, although 18.4% of students at Catholic schools are not believers of the Catholic faith. (Lindenberger 2021)
‘Selected Students’ skew Scores Results for Private Schools -
Charter schools reach for top students, discourage lower performing students from joining. Without these top students, public schools do sometimes break even or beat private schools’ scores. (Lindenberger 2021)
Benefits of homeschooling and private, charter, and religious schools.
Private school class size -
The average class size is 25 kids, compared to 19 kids per class in private schools. Correspondingly, private schools have a better student-to-teacher ratio of 12.2 students, compared to 16.1 students per class. (NCES 2020)
Variety of classes -
Private schools, “tend to offer a wider array of extracurricular offerings, advanced placement courses, International Baccalaureate programs, and gifted studies classes.” (Lindenberger 2021)
Homeschooling is gaining popularity -
From 1999-2012, the rate of homeschooling was steady around 3.3%. In Fall 2020 that rate had risen to 11.1% (US Census). Between Spring and Fall 2020, the rate of Black families choosing homeschooling went up 5x from 3.3% to 16.1%. (Time 2022)
Graduation rates -
Approximately 95% of private school students graduate, compared to 85% of public school students (NCES 2021)
Concerns about curriculum and political ideology -
There are stories in Conservative media about Gay Straight Alliances telling students to not trust their parents, and to keep what they’re taught about transgender issues secret. School policy is to keep students’ status as socially transitioning to a new gender hidden from parents, including clothes, pronouns, and names. Some places are making laws to allow minors, as young as 13, to medically transition without parental knowledge or consent.
Critical Race Theory, 1619 Project, Social Emotional Learning -
Conservative media frames narratives around these topics as creating racial division, as harming White children by telling them that they’re ‘oppressors’ who have stolen everything in their lives, and as harming BIPOC children by telling them that they will never be more than victims in a system meant to exploit them. Christopher Rufo has recently had a lot of success in this area.
Internet changes the infrastructure equation -
The traditional knock against homeschool was limited curriculum, but thanks to the internet there are numerous organizations and resources dedicated to parents who homeschool alone or in small groups.
The number of Conservative, classical liberal education charter schools is growing -
Hillsdale College is building a network of Curriculum, Membership, and Certified schools across America and in Ecuador. With a pro-West and pro-American pedagogy, they’re building and growing very quickly, offering themselves as an alternative to parents afraid of Leftwing public education.
Works Cited -
DeGeurin, Mack. 2019. “The US spends more on education than any other country, but students lag behind academically. Here's how much other countries spend and how well their students perform.” Insider, August 22. https://www.insider.com/how-much-countries-around-the-world-spend-on-education-2019-8
Desanctis, Alexandra. 2022. “Nearly Three-Quarters of Americans Support School Choice.” National Review, March 1. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nearly-three-quarters-of-americans-support-school-choice/
Eggleston, Casey and Jason Fields. 2021. “Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey Shows Significant Increase in Homeschooling Rates in Fall 2020.” US Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/03/homeschooling-on-the-rise-during-covid-19-pandemic.html
Gleason, Patrick. 2022. “Reforms Expanding Parental Choice In Education Continue To Advance In State Capitals.” Forbes, February 3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2022/02/03/reforms-expanding-parental-choice-in-education-continue-to-advance-in-state-capitals/?sh=261f94bf6dc8
Howe, Amy. “Justices add one religious-rights case to docket but turn down another.” SCOTUSblog, July 2. https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/07/justices-add-one-religious-rights-case-to-docket-but-turn-down-another/
Lindenberger, Hudson. 2021. “Private School vs. Public School: Facts, Benefits & Statistics.” Fatherly, October 12. https://www.fatherly.com/love-money/private-school-vs-public-school-facts-benefits-statistics/
National Center for Education Statistics. 2006. “Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling.” NCES. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.asp
National Center for Education Statistics. 2021. “Public High School Graduation Rates.” NCES https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi
National Center for Education Statistics. 2022. “Fast Facts.” NCES. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
Reilly, Katie. 2022. “For Black Parents Resisting White-Washed History, Homeschooling Is an Increasingly Popular Option.” Time, February 28. https://time.com/6151375/black-families-homeschooling/
Riser-Kositsky, Maya. 2022. “Education Statistics: Facts About American Schools.” Education Week, January 3. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/2019/01