Monday, Nov. 13, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Around the time of this nation’s founding, the education of children was without order or design. The children who were educated, predominantly white children, obtained that education through an assemblage of means. Work apprenticeships, private tutoring, boarding schools or church-supported schools were some methods used for becoming educated in some sense.
It wasn’t until the 1830s that the idea of states offering a free public-school education to all children took root. Advocates such as Massachusetts legislator Horace Mann believed that a public investment in education was the best way to ensure social and national unity through an educated public that could actively and successfully participate in democracy. Massachusetts created the first state board of education in 1837, after establishing the first public high school and free public school to all grades. “By 1918, every state required students to complete elementary school,” reports the nonprofit American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence in a 2015 article on its blog.
The push to offer free public education was not without detractors or critics. Some argued that they should not have to pay higher taxes to educate other people’s children. Others argued that the policy would wrongly take money from the working-class to fund education for the rich. It was also argued that public schools would not serve as a unifying force if private schools siphoned off substantial numbers of students, resources and parental support from the most advantaged groups.
The public investment in public education has paid off. In 1830, about 55% of children aged 5 to 14 were enrolled in public schools. By 1870, that number had risen to about 78%. In 1910, just 14% of Americans aged 25 and older had completed high school. By 1970, that number increased to 55%. By 2017, 90% of Americans aged 25 and older had a high school diploma. As of 2021, according to the Census Bureau, this number sat at 91.1%.
The vast majority of Americans who have an education obtained it through public schools. According to National Center for Education Statistics data, 50.8 million students were enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools as of fall 2019. At that same time, just 4.7 million students were enrolled in private K-12 schools.
Said another way, the reason that most Americans today have an education is because we decided that the government should take on the duty to educate the citizenry. Free market forces and private action were not the means to establish an educated electorate. Compulsory laws, minimum standards, and the promise of no cost were.
Today I see what, in my mind, looks like a return to the days of haphazard schooling before the public school system was widespread. I see this reversion in multiple state efforts to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize private and parochial school education.
I call this kind of public financing of private education a reversion because, in my mind, it represents the government abdicating its duty to educate the citizenry. Again, the public school system was created because we decided that the government should be responsible for educating those whom it serves. When the government gives our tax dollars, which are taken so that the government can perform this duty, not to public schools created in furtherance of that public duty, but to private schools created to make a profit or serve some other private agenda, the government is breaching its obligation to the citizens.
I can see the argument that public schools (some of them) are failing to properly educate their students. Therefore, parents of students in those areas served by those failing schools should be given the option to send their children to private (presumably better) schools on the public dime. Those parents are taxpayers, too, and should be entitled to use their tax dollars as they wish.
That is not an unreasonable argument. However, that sounds to me like an argument which supports government action that does not solve the problem. It only exacerbates it.
Where a public school is failing, the government is failing to perform its fundamental duty to educate citizens. The two institutions, public schools and government, are inextricably linked. The former is merely an arm of the latter. When we allow government to invest public education dollars in private schools, we implicitly accept the idea that government has no (or at least very limited) control over what occurs in the public schools that it creates.
I reject that premise. Where a public school is failing, the government has a moral responsibility to do everything within its power to turn that school around. No action rooted in that moral responsibility involves sending money to private schools. Private schools have no similar moral responsibility to the public. And considering that public education dollars are a finite resource; it is a zero-sum game of sorts. Money given to private schools is money that could otherwise be given to public schools.
Governments must view their public schools as their exclusive domains over which they have absolute control. If governments viewed public schools in this way, there would be no need (or desire) to give public money to private institutions to do the government’s job.
Eric Foster is a lawyer in private practice and a columnist for The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.
