Completing Freedom with Justice in Education

Fourth Quarter 2000

by Charles L. Glenn

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, Pierce v. Society of Sisters. Upholding the right of parents against the state of Oregon to decide where to educate their children, the court wrote in 1925 that "the fundamental theory upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."

In the early 1920s, Oregon had passed a law requiring that all children between 8 and 16 attend public schools and only public schools. Only in this way, the proponents urged, could social unity be achieved. The public schools would serve to blend Americans into a single people with shared loyalties and would minimize the effects of religious and other differences. The Supreme Court struck down Oregon's law, recognizing that in a free society, parents, not the state, should decide what beliefs children will be encouraged to hold until they reach the age of maturity.

Oregon was not the only state that considered establishing an educational monopoly. A constitutional amendment was on the ballot in Michigan in 1920 that would have required all children between the ages of 5 and 16 to attend public schools. (The amendment lost.) The opposition to religious schools in the 1920s, in Michigan, Oregon, and other states, reflected an intolerance of the social and cultural diversity that had grown so dramatically as a result of immigration. However, while educational freedom was sustained in the 1920s, educational justice was deferred and remains to be won.

Freedom is without meaning if you cannot exercise it. We have, in this country, educational freedom only for those with money. The National Center for Educational Statistics estimated, several years ago, that 70 percent of the families with incomes over $50,000 had chosen the schools their children would attend, through residential decisions or through paying tuition or through using public school choice and selection programs. For those with low or moderate incomes, educational freedom is an illusion. That is why all the surveys show that the population group showing least support for educational vouchers is white suburbanites. The groups expressing most support for vouchers are black and Hispanic urban residents in the age category with young children.

I am far from being an opponent of the public schools. I sent all seven of my children to the Boston Public Schools and worked for the Massachusetts Department of Education for 21 years. But I am convinced that it is unhealthy for public schools, for teachers, and for our society to allow the public schools to have a monopoly on public funding. Virtually every nation with universal schooling, including former communist- bloc countries, provides funding for the schools that parents choose.

It is high time that we Americans complete freedom with justice in education, enabling all parents to choose the schools they want for their children. My concern is that we plan intelligently for the new arrangements that are coming so that effective public accountability can be balanced with protection of the integrity of faith-based schools that receive public funds. With careful design, it is possible to assure that schools of choice are publicly accountable. But it is equally as important to assure that the integrity of faith-based schools is not endangered as a result of public funding. Such schools, for example, must be allowed to make hiring decisions and to determine the composition of their governing boards in keeping with their own purposes, convictions, and philosophies.

Furthermore, if it is true that schools which proclaim their religious identity actually are, in some fundamental way, different from their secular counterparts because they rest on a different understanding of human "nature and destiny," then it should be possible to articulate that and make it the basis for professional training and practice. If faith-based schools are not different, the rationale for making greater use of their capacity to serve the public good becomes very shaky, and it is unlikely that they will be able to resist accommodation to the norms of secular professionalism.

Three components are necessary to complete freedom with justice in education: (1) diverse schools that maintain their integrity, (2) real freedom for parents to choose from among those schools, and (3) public policies that uphold structural pluralism with public accountability.

[Dr. Glenn is a professor of education at Boston University and a Fellow of the Center for Public Justice. These remarks have been excerpted from speeches he gave this past summer at a conference on educational reform in Rimini, Italy, and at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.]