As Mao Zedong took over China with his communist revolutionaries, he sparked one of the largest mass migrations of the 20th century. Between 1948 and 1950, an estimated 2 million Chinese refugees fled Mao’s regime and escaped to Taiwan and other countries around the world. While Mao was razing and restructuring Chinese culture and society, these refugees were able to begin new lives in safer and freer countries.

While the Chinese mass migration makes the history books, a similar 2-million-in-2-years migration is currently happening—across educational borders. An analysis published by Harvard’s Education Next Institute (EN) recently announced that, between the spring of 2020 and the spring of 2022, “Our polling data indicate that district-operated schools lost 4% of student enrollments to other types of schooling between 2020 and 2022.” EN went on to say, “If that percentage is accurate, it means that nearly 2 million students have shifted from traditional public schools to alternative school arrangements.”

Individual examples of the recent dramatic shift in educational choices are not hard to find. While New York City (NYC) public schools have been steadily losing students over the past five years, they lost 10 percent of their remaining students during the COVID-19 epidemic alone. Those children are not expected to return, and the NYC public school system is now at a 15-year enrollment low. California’s state school system is at a 20-year enrollment low; over 270,000 students have left since COVID. Los Angeles alone lost more than 10 percent of students. The Chicago government school system is projected to have lost 100,000 students—more than 25 percent of total enrollment—by the end of the ten-year period between 2015 and 2025.

And states such as Michigan, Rhode Island, and Minnesota have all experienced drops in enrollment, continuing even after the initial COVID-19 year. Now, EN does caution that “the overall picture shows less change than media reports portray,” and that these trends do not constitute a “mass exodus,” but the statistics are nonetheless remarkably significant.

Harsh lockdown policies and virus mitigation measures have surely been significant in shifting the nation’s educational choices. According to Education Next’s analysis:

“In November 2020, Education Next polling data revealed widespread parental worries about the learning loss, social isolation, emotional distress, and physical inactivity induced by school closures, online learning programs, and other measures designed to prevent Covid spread.”

However, the presence of COVID-19 lockdown policies can’t be the only factor; EN also points out that when pandemic measures were relaxed, their polls showed a notable improvement in parent satisfaction. “By spring 2022 … parental distress had subsided.” Yet enrollments continue to decline. Something else must be up.

As the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) suggests, what started as “pandemic pods” during the thick of the crisis eventually became co-ops and “microschools,” which many families have found to work better for them than government schools. Catholic schools and private schools were more likely to remain open during the pandemic and thus received an influx of students. In short, FEE assesses, “Parents are recognizing that they have many more options for their children’s education and are continuing to abandon government-assigned district schools.”

This change is notably visible in EN’s data. Contrary to their government schools over the same two-year period, private schools (8 to 10 percent), charter schools (5 to 7 percent) and homeschooling (6 to 7 percent) all boasted shares of enrollment greater than when the pandemic started. And the enrollment numbers match the parental polls:

“Parents expressed higher levels of satisfaction with their child’s school if their student was attending a private or charter school rather than a district school.”

This change in the nation’s educational landscape has provoked a range of reactions from the nation’s leaders—on the one hand, no fewer than 18 new states over the past two years have passed laws broadening education choice. However, not all government officials have been as friendly to the widening school choice trend; the U.S. Department of Education recently considered instituting new hurdles for charter schools to receive government funds, inciting bipartisan protest and raising the hue and cry of even powerful liberal advocate Michael Bloomberg. Government reactions to parental choices will likely continue to unfold along one or the other of those two lines, and for Christians, who are commanded to pray for our leaders (1 Timothy 2:1-2), this is both a timely and an important area to focus on.

In a plummeting culture such as ours, educational choice is becoming increasingly imperative. Former governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, inadvertently expressed one reason why: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” This is a stark departure from the biblical model of education, in which parents are responsible for teaching their children (Deuteronomy 6:7, Ephesians 6:4). Schools help parents accomplish that goal; parents don’t abdicate their responsibility to the school system, and neither should that responsibility be divested from them by force of law.

When parents decide that their child would be better served by a private school, charter school, homeschooling, or online learning, it should not be the authority of the school district, local, state or federal governments to tell them otherwise. Doing so flips the biblical model on its head, and comments such as McAuliffe’s are foundationally wicked, because they imply that schools, not parents, are the ultimate authority over the education of children.

Education freedom should be championed in every state in the Union. Make no mistake about it, parents who want their children to attend government schools should be able to do so. However, the rising migration across educational borders—only accelerated by the the pandemic—also means “we, the people,” must work to reduce all barriers to education choices so that parents, not the government, are enabled to make the best decisions possible about their children’s development. This should be a consideration in picking candidates to vote for in this upcoming election, and in every future election we participate in.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is slated to hear a case regarding the use of tax-payer dollars for private education. It seems that the more conservative judges will support this concept. Interestingly, although it grows the tax burden and increases government reach not merely over public school, but extends it over private schools as well, Republicans and Christians are two groups that almost always support this kind of legislation / ruling.

Espinoza vs. Montana Department of Revenue centers on the Montana Supreme Court’s decision to end a state program giving students scholarship aid to attend private schools. The court based its decision on the state’s constitutional provision barring government money from going to religious schools. The SCOTUS is scheduled to hear the case in the Summer of 2020.

President Donald Trump and Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, have both previously expressed their desire to see not only state funds, but federal funds allocated for private school and homeschooling programs. While there is a desire on the part of many conservative taxpayers to see their tax money going to something that would support their own beliefs and values, I suggest we should step back for a moment and look before we leap at the offer of government money.

Here are some questions we should ask:

1.) Is it Constitutional?

Whatever is not explicitly directed as a role of the federal government in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is the responsibility of the individual states. The U.S. Constitution does not make a provision for the federal government to guide, oversee, and direct education. That means that any such decisions need to be handled on a state level. The U.S. Department of Education should be closed. We don’t need it because it isn’t Constitutional.

2.) Is it Biblical?

As Christians, the Bible gives us guidelines of what God expects from the civil government, the church and the family.

The Civil Government

First Peter 2 and Romans 13 tell us that God gave the power of the sword to the civil government for them to punish those who do what is evil. They are to protect the God-given rights of the individual, the family, the church, etc. They are not supposed to be involved in raising children. That is an assignment given exclusively to families.

The Church

While it surprises many who have never specifically studied the issue, there are no verses in the New Testament where the church is commanded by God to teach children as a segmented group. Children in the early church learned with the rest of the congregation but were never separated out by age or grade for specific instruction. That model is one that churches imported far later (often from the government school system).

The Family

Fathers and mothers (and in a couple of places grandparents) are the only people commanded by God in the Bible to teach and instruct children. Parents (with the help and instruction of Biblically qualified church elders and a loving Christian community) are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the education of their own children. While it is not forbidden in Scripture for children to be taught by people other than their parents (in a supplementary role), God does not allow parents to neglect their own duties in this matter.

3.) Is it Wise?

Even if we can get government funding for private schools or homeschools, do we truly want that? If there is one lesson that should be abundantly clear from history it is that whatever the government funds, it controls. If you want your children to receive an education that is free from leftist bias and propaganda, you are going to need to pay for that education yourself. I have written elsewhere about why I believe tax-funding for private education (especially religious instruction) has strings and should be avoided.

4.) It Makes Government Bigger

Spending tax dollars for private education not only compromises its own integrity and autonomy, it also increases the already crushing tax burden on working class Americans. Increasing government spending for private schools only makes government bigger, a concept that most conservatives claim to be against. We need to remember that the government doesn’t have any money. It only has what it takes by force from its citizens. Do we really want our private schools being funded by money taken by force from our neighbors who did not choose to give it? Is that the goal of privatized education?

5.) You Must Allow All Religious Schools Equal Access

Many Christians are inconsistent with their application of how tax funds could/should be used for private education. When I ask them if they like the idea of tax dollars being used to fund religious instruction in Christian schools, many say they favor it. But when I ask them if they are fine with their tax dollars going to fund Islamic instruction in a Muslim school, they suddenly get quiet, or oppose the idea outright. Fair is fair when it comes to public monies. You can’t encourage the idea of atheists paying for religious instruction for your children in your private schools, and then complain about a Wiccan school, or a transgender private school receiving the same funds.

Keep Private Education Truly Private

As conservatives, we should be looking for ways to decrease taxation for all schooling, and support tax incentives for businesses and individuals that allow them to keep their own money in their own pockets. Private education is successful because the private sector is always more efficient than the government. Given the opportunity (and adequate capital), privatized schools will always out-perform (on the average) government-controlled schools. There are many changes that can be made to the tax law that help encourage private education (privately funded savings accounts, tax deductions, etc.) that leave money in the pockets of the citizens/businesses, rather than take them away, and apportion some of it back with strings attached. I’d encourage you to consider strongly that what looks like a carrot dangling at the end of a rope may end up being a noose that kills the freedom of private schools to completely control what they teach.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.