A Reformation in Public Education School Choice in Theory and Practice

American public education is undergoing a seismic change. As more states adopt universal school choice policies, the U.S. Supreme Court continues to define the constitutional rights and limitations of religious freedom and the civic obligations inherent in compulsory education.

In a series of recent decisions, the Court has made clear to states that though they are not constitutionally required to offer school choice to families, they must not exclude religious schools from any choice programs that they choose to adopt. Further, the Court has made clear that public financial support of religious schooling does not violate the Constitution.

In the last two years, eight states (Arizona, West Virginia, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Ohio) either adopted universal school choice programs or expanded existing programs through Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs). These accounts provide parents with public funds that they can use to purchase schooling (through, for example, tuition or educational materials), including religious schooling, for their children.

Meanwhile, many other states seem politically averse to universal school choice and to public support for religious schools. (A state is considered to have “universal school choice” if it makes funding available to all families of school-age children, without income restrictions or a cap on the number of students who may participate.) Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have charter school programs in place, all of which exclude religious groups from seeking charter school status. Challenges to this exclusion will come before the courts in the years to come. In 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board approved an application for a charter school to be operated by a Roman Catholic diocese, which would make it the first religious charter school in the nation.[1] This summer, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the school board to rescind the contract. The religious school is appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.[2]

In states that adopted universal school choice, the impetus came from a heightened awareness among parents that traditional public schools were not being responsive to their strongly held wishes for the education of their children.

The first notable parental uprising began toward the end of the Obama administration as the Common Core initiative, which had generated bipartisan support in Washington policy circles, met local resistance as it was rolled out in the states.[3] It turned out that local control of school policy, which had always been a bedrock principle of the American system, still enjoyed strong support in much of the country. The Common Core standards and attendant standardized tests met with opposition in many locales simply because they were being passed down from the central government to the state and then on to local schools and districts. Opposition rose from both the political right and the left.[4]

Some parents were further alienated by the Obama administration’s decision to use statistical analysis of racial disparities in student disciplinary actions and the administration’s embrace of alternatives to school suspension.[5] More recently, the Biden administration has written regulations involving itself in controversies over the proper response to new thinking about gender identities, bathroom policies, and school sports.[6] These actions have met with similar resistance.

The lengthy school closures as part of the nation’s response to the pandemic drove a further wedge between the proponents of local control and those who kept raising the bar on the conditions necessary to fully open schools.[7]

The pandemic school closures resulted in more than the achievement losses that are relevant to the current discussion of school choice policy. They also undermined the long-standing notion of compulsory attendance in school. In January 2024, Alec MacGillis documented the sustained rise in “chronic absenteeism among students,” which, he noted, has “nearly doubled between 2018–19 and 2021–22 to 28% of students.”[8] He identifies two issues: educators’ declining to use sanctions to compel parents to send their children to school; and the message that was sent to students during the pandemic shutdowns—that school attendance was not important and that children could stay at home and “play on their computers.”

This abandonment of complying with and enforcing compulsory attendance laws relates to the debate about school choice in two important ways. First, it is a perverse and destructive form of choice—a choice not to send one’s children to school regularly, as required by law. Second, it exposes the failure of the traditional public school district model, which posits that a combination of the state education department and a local district office can design and administer an effective school model without the feedback provided by a functioning market of family sovereignty and diverse choice. If the traditional institutional arrangement cannot be certain of the participation of families and students, its ability to deliver on broader civic and educational goals is questionable.

Legal Developments

To understand the current state of school choice policy in the U.S., we must review the conclusions of three crucial Supreme Court rulings.

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer.[9] Trinity Lutheran Church Child Learning Center is a preschool and day-care center in Missouri that was originally established as a nonprofit; it later merged with Trinity Lutheran Church and now operates under its auspices and on church property.

The preschool and state came into conflict in 2012 when “the Center sought to replace a large portion of the pea gravel [playground surface] with a pour-in-place rubber surface by participating in Missouri’s Scrap Tire Program. The program, run by the State’s Department of Natural Resources, offers reimbursement grants to qualifying nonprofit organizations that install playground surfaces made from recycled tires.” But the department had a strict policy of denying grants to any applicant that was owned by or controlled by a religious entity, and the application was denied.

The Court ruled: “The State has pursued its preferred policy to the point of expressly denying a qualified religious entity a public benefit solely because of its religious character. Under our precedents, that goes too far. The Department’s policy violates the Free Exercise Clause.”

A footnote in the Court’s majority opinion clarified: “This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.”

Espinoza et al. v. Montana Department of Revenue.[10] In this 2020 case, the Supreme Court considered a Montana program that granted tax credits to “those who donate to organizations that award scholarships for school tuition.” However, the Montana Constitution barred government aid to any school run “in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination,” and rules from the Montana Department of Revenue prohibited families from using the scholarships at religious schools.

The Supreme Court noted that Montana relied on its state constitution, which included a Blaine Amendment—anti-Catholic constitutional amendments adopted by many states in the late 19th century. These amendments barred public aid to religious schools, in response to the growing immigration of Catholic—largely Irish—families to the U.S. and the resulting growth in the number of Catholic schools in the country. At the time of the Espinoza case, 37 states still had these amendments in place.[11]

Citing its own ruling in Trinity Lutheran and noting that the Montana program was a clear case of the state barring the participation of religious schools in the scholarship program simply because of their status as religious schools, the Court ruled: “A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.” The Court went on to invoke the “Supremacy Clause [which] provides that ‘the Judges in every State shall be bound’ by the Federal Constitution, ‘any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.’ ”[12]

Until this ruling, the state-level Blaine Amendments were viewed as the primary impediment to state support of religious schools. With Espinoza, the Supreme Court removed that impediment. Notre Dame law professor and Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Stelle Garnett described the ruling as answering the more than century-long plea of supporters of Catholic and other religious schools that “preventing such schools from accessing public resources because they are religious is unjust, born of bigotry, and ought to end.”[13]

Carson v. Makin.[14] In this 2022 case, the Court considered Maine’s tuition-assistance program for parents who live in school districts with no secondary school of their own or no contract with a school in another district. Under the program, parents designate the secondary school that they would like their child to attend, and the school district transmits payments to that school to help defray the tuition costs. Participating private schools must meet certain requirements to be eligible to receive tuition payments and can differ from the public schools in many ways but, since 1981, Maine has limited tuition-assistance payments to “nonsectarian” schools—schools that do not provide religious instruction.

A lower court attempted to distinguish this case from Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza on the ground that the funding restrictions in those cases were “solely status-based religious discrimination,” while the challenged provision here “imposes a use-based restriction.” But in its ruling, the Supreme Court stated that those previous decisions “never suggested that use-based discrimination is any less offensive to the Free Exercise Clause” than status-based discrimination. Since educating young people in their faith is at the core of the mission of a private religious school, “any attempt to give effect to such a distinction by scrutinizing whether and how a religious school pursues its educational mission would also raise serious concerns about state entanglement with religion and denominational favoritism.”

Maine’s nonsectarian requirement for an otherwise generally available tuition assistance program was ruled an unconstitutional violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. This case resolved the distinction between status and use as it applies to public funding of religious schools.

Legislative Developments

EdChoice, which tracks school choice policies nationwide, characterized 2023 as “a historic year for educational freedom for families. Not only did seven states enact new choice programs, another 12 states expanded ones already in operation. Setting a record, eight states joined Arizona and West Virginia in offering all or nearly all students choice.” It dubbed 2023 “the Year of Universal Choice.”[15]

As stated above, a state program is considered to have “universal choice” if it makes funding available to all families of school-age children, without income restrictions or a cap on the number of students who may participate. States that do not have universal choice programs may still have programs that provide funding to specific types of families or students. Some limit the funding to lower-income families or to students with special needs. In recent years, West Virginia, Arizona, and Florida have expanded their previously limited programs to universal programs.

West Virginia adopted universal school choice in 2021, effective for the 2022–23 school year.[16] It provides families with the previous year’s statewide average of state education aid (net of administrative costs). In 2022, Arizona expanded its Empowerment Scholarship Account program by removing previous limits on the type of eligible students and a cap on the total number of students allowed into the program.[17] In 2023, Florida joined Arizona in eliminating family-income limits and an overall cap on the number of students who could participate in its Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options.[18] Utah also passed an ESA program in 2023. It is nominally universal, but the total amount of funding that can be distributed is limited to $42.5 million.[19]

Ohio has several voucher programs.[20] Statewide Educational Choice Scholarships for students with autism were introduced in 2004; in 2006, students who were enrolled in low-performing schools across the state became eligible for vouchers. In 2012, vouchers were made available for up to 5% of students with special needs across the state. In the following year, all students from families with income less than 450% of the poverty level became eligible for vouchers. In 2021, the state enacted a tax credit program, which allowed individuals and groups to receive a $750 credit for contributions to scholarship granting organizations. In 2023, Ohio expanded its Educational Choice Scholarships to include all students in the state, with the scholarship amount varying by family-income level.

In 2023, Oklahoma enacted a tax credit program that will be implemented for the 2024–25 school year.[21] All students are eligible, but the state has capped tax credits to $150 million. The tax credit will be processed through the state income tax but can be larger than the tax owed by a family. If that is the case, the surplus will be paid out to the parents.

Iowa’s ESA program became active in the 2023–24 school year.[22] For the program’s first two years, there will be some family-income limits and a requirement that students be incoming kindergartners or enrolled in a public school before accessing the credit. In 2025–26, it will be available to all students.

Educational Savings Accounts

ESAs are the most prominent form of new school choice programs. Unlike school vouchers, ESA programs typically allow parents to use public funds to purchase an array of educational services for their children, including school tuition, tutoring, educational materials for homeschooling, online advanced coursework, and micro-schooling; allowable expenses vary by state. Successfully implementing these programs can be complex. A 2023 Manhattan Institute report by Notre Dame’s Nicole Stelle Garnett and EdChoice’s Michael McShane describes five key areas of successful ESA implementation.[23] I summarize my colleagues’ suggestions below:

Parent Information and Engagement. Families must be clearly informed of the types of educational services that are eligible for ESAs. There should be a dedicated website with clear guidance, and states might encourage the use of Parent Navigators, trusted organizations that can advise parents on the various educational services (and the services’ quality) available to them. These navigators could be funded by the state itself, private philanthropy, or on a fee-for-service basis chargeable to the family’s ESA account.

Self-Reflection and Intentionality by Schools. Private and religious schools must recognize the challenges and opportunities that the ESA model presents. As the funding increases, the demand for high-quality schooling aligned with parents’ priorities will rise, and competition among schools will increase. Schools must be prepared to compete in this larger playing field. At the same time, private and religious schools need to stay on their guard against legislative or regulatory attempts to impinge on their autonomy. To compete (and head off attempts to overregulate them), participating schools must be transparent about their quality and financials.

Regulators and Regulations Are as Important as Legislation. Legislation should clearly state which agency will administer the ESA program. The state education department might seem like the logical choice to house the program, but long-standing agencies might be too tied to the traditional school-district model. In that case, a financial agency, such as treasury or finance, might be the appropriate location for the ESA program’s management. Further, a state should consider contracting out day-to-day management of the program to an independent private entity. This company must be capable of quickly and successfully addressing customer service issues.

Make Transferring Funds from the ESA to Service Providers Smooth and User-Friendly. The legislation or regulations creating the ESA should ensure that almost all potential uses of ESA money fall into either the “always allowed” or “never allowed” category, with only a small amount requiring review, which will necessarily involve delay. Programs must allow parents and vendors to make quick decisions. Program administrators may rely on follow-up audits to identify any unforeseen types of misuse.

Program Supporters Must Be Prepared to Fight Legal Challenges. School choice programs often face legal challenges, and supporters must be ready to fight those challenges. Despite the recent Supreme Court rulings, plaintiffs will still try to prevent religious schools from participating in ESA programs. Religious schools and aligned parents should seek advice from nationally recognized groups and institutions. Similarly, efforts to limit the scope of ESAs based on the argument that they drain resources from public schools can be countered.[24]

The hard-won gains for ESA initiatives need to be protected. For example, the Democratic governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, would stifle her state’s popular school choice programs. Hobbs recently proposed a plan that would require private school teachers to meet “minimum education requirements” before teaching ESA students and require private schools to provide special-education students with the same (often prohibitively expensive) services that they receive at public schools. She also favors requiring that students attend public school for 100 days before receiving an ESA and for the state to audit the expenditures of participating private schools.[25]

Private and religious school educators and advocates have at times expressed concern that the acceptance of public money (i.e., vouchers or ESAs) will bring extensive regulation of their schools and require them to conform to state requirements regarding assessment of student achievement. While some level of accountability is to be expected, the requirements pressed upon schools that accept ESA money should not be so onerous as to discourage schools from participating in the program. The potential benefits of school choice are maximized when there is a sufficient supply of eligible schools to satisfy demand.

In a 2021 issue brief[26] for the Manhattan Institute, Nicole Stelle Garnett discussed issues around academic accountability in a choice-based system. Stelle Garnett points to four areas of potential conflict between the general framework of parental choice and the reasonable expectation that schools participating in a choice program should be accountable for student achievement.

The first conflict is a political one, whereby a hostile legislature or governor seeks to undermine choice through costly and/or unnecessary reporting requirements on schools.

The second area of conflict is that the accountability system might reduce the supply of private school seats, either by barring lower-performing private schools from participating, or by closing participating schools if they show lower-than-expected results. The conflict arises if the system does not apply consequences to public schools in the same way. If it does not, it might force students from closed private schools to transfer to even lower-performing public schools. Politically, teachers’ unions and other public school advocates have fought hard against the closure of public schools for performance issues.

The third conflict arises out of selection bias. There might be differences in the student populations across public and private schools. Opponents of choice often claim that private schools “skim the cream” by admitting only the most capable students. That might occur in some private schools, but it also happens in public schools, some of which have academic admissions standards. Public school selection bias is also present in wealthier suburban school districts that typically serve a wealthier population. On the private school side, any ESA or means-tested choice program will have participating schools accepting students from lower-income families. Accountability systems must account for these differences across schools.

Fourth, Stelle Garnett addresses the limits of standardized testing in its failure to measure other valid outcomes of schooling beyond reading and mathematics skills. “Noncognitive educational skills,” such as resilience, character, and generosity, are typically unmeasured by state accountability systems but often are a core component of private and religious schools.

Stelle Garnett argues that accountability in school choice programs should be designed to help parents “make good choices.”[27] Empowered with the right information, parents will be able to choose wisely, and thereby “drive improvement in their own child’s performance but also in school quality overall, limiting the need for punitive regulatory interventions.” In this way, they would be the instruments of accountability.[28] To facilitate wise choices, the information provided about schools should be “transparent, readily available, easy to interpret, and matched, to the greatest extent possible, with the indicia of school quality that matter to parents in the real world.”[29] It should be tied to a pluralistic view of the purpose of education—which recognizes that families vary in their expectations of schooling and that children will be able to find success in disparate ways—rather than the singular goal of college-readiness.

The recently enacted universal choice programs or expanded ESAs vary in their approach to accountability:

• Arizona does not require private or homeschooled children to be tested annually.[30]
• Oklahoma currently does not require participating students to be assessed, though the state legislature is considering a bill that would require testing.[31]
• Arkansas does require participating private schools to administer a norm-referenced test to scholarship recipients and to report those results.[32]
• In West Virginia, private schools are required to administer nationally normed standardized tests and report their aggregate results to the state education department.[33] Homeschooled children must take standardized tests each year in grades 3, 5, 8, and 11, and parents must report those scores to their county of residence.[34]
• In Iowa, all students, including those in private schools, are required to participate in the state’s annual testing program.[35]
• In Florida, private schools that accept public funding from any of the state’s school choice programs are required to annually test and report the results for students participating in the choice program.[36]
• While Utah’s program does not require participating students to participate in standardized testing, it does require that participating homeschoolers or private school families provide “a portfolio describing the scholarship student’s educational opportunities and achievements for the given year,” or the results of a norm-referenced test.[37]
• Ohio requires participating students to participate in the state testing programs.[38]

States that are considering the adoption of universal school choice or expanding their choice regime should consider how the various approaches to accountability work out in these states. Notably, Arizona and Oklahoma are unique in not requiring annual testing of program participants, though Oklahoma’s situation might change. The challenge is to design an accountability program that is not onerous to innovative private schools while also meeting the electorate’s need for feedback (or not) on the performance of students receiving public funds.

For universal school choice to work, there must be a diverse set of participating schools—and enough of them to serve families. Parents differ in their educational preferences, and individual students vary in terms of their own educational interests and needs. A market-based system should serve as an incubator for innovation in ways that traditional top-down school districts might not. There should be diversity and innovation in the instructional method as well as in the instructional content and values, within broad limits defined by the state. Some of the theoretical explanations for this view of school choice are discussed in the Appendix of this paper.

Manhattan Institute scholars have profiled innovative schools in both the private and public sectors. These schools and others like them demonstrate that schools need not look alike, nor must they serve all students through a least-common-denominator approach. School choice policies can foster a diversity of supply. The design of these policies should consider how much variation in school content and focus should be allowed under a universal school choice regime.

Religious Schools and Religious Freedom

In states that adopt ESAs, religious schools will be able to accept those funds from admitted students. Any attempt to ban the use of ESAs in religious schools would almost certainly run afoul of the Supreme Court rulings in Trinity, Espinoza, and Carson. It remains to be seen whether new schools will be created in the religious sector in response to ESA adoption. Two studies from Manhattan Institute scholars describe completely private but new religious schools—one Catholic and one Jewish.

The Hawthorn School opened in autumn 2022 in an affluent New York suburb, Bedford.[39] In addition to being a Catholic school, it has adopted a classical curriculum that is discussed later in this report. The school’s founding headmaster took inspiration from a vision of schooling proposed by G. K. Chesterton, who, in 1924, described education as “the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to the next.”[40] In discussion, the headmaster cites the influence of educational reformer E. D. Hirsch, who coined the term “ ‘American scripture’ to indicate the collection of writings and ideas that proved so influential in the formation of American culture and ideals.”[41]

Hawthorn is also notable because it inhabits a building that was once a traditional parish school until it was closed by the Archdiocese of New York because of low enrollment, as many parish schools have been closed over the years. The Catholic school system, for many decades the biggest alternative to public schools in the country, has been in steep decline for years. Some education watchers argue that its future[42] lies in new and different types of schools, with enhanced curricula enabling it to compete successfully in a universal choice regime.[43]

Jewish schools and yeshivas are found in select states and communities across the country. In New York City, their enrollment has surpassed that of Catholic schools, making them the largest educator in the religious sector. A new organization, Tamim Academies, adopted a strategy found in charter school networks and is building a small network of new Jewish schools in various locales nationwide.[44]

Tamim’s small central staff handles curriculum design, teacher hiring, and professional development for the schools in the network. The individual schools are created and maintained by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which already sponsors more than 400 early-childhood centers across the country. Chabad-Lubavitch also operates yeshivas for its own members, but the Tamim schools are viewed as outreach to the larger Jewish community. No religious requirements are placed on Jewish families that wish to enroll in a Tamim school, though Judaic studies are infused into all aspects of the curriculum, religious and secular studies alike.

A small Catholic school on Long Island, St. Mary’s High School, is reinvigorating itself by emphasizing the traditional Catholic ideals of faith and reason.[45] Its approach to curriculum and its ability to attract young priests and sisters to its program might point the way for other Catholic schools to follow.

Many in the religious school sector are concerned that accepting government funding of any type, including ESAs, will result in regulation or oversight of their curriculum. But a current debate in New York State demonstrates that remaining “untainted” by government funds does not protect religious schools from attempted governmental interference. For almost 130 years, New York State law required that religious school students receive a curriculum substantially equivalent to that of the local public schools.[46] That law was unenforced for most of its history. The array of religious schools in New York has changed dramatically in recent decades, with Catholic schools in decline and Jewish schools experiencing large enrollment gains. Among Jewish schools, the enrollment growth has occurred in haredi, sometimes referred to as “ultraorthodox,” communities.[47] These are single-sex schools, and the programs for girls and boys differ. In recent years, complaints have arisen from some members of these communities that the program offered in boys’ schools is out of compliance with the state’s substantial equivalence law.

Undoubtedly, some boys’ schools offer a curriculum that emphasizes Judaic or religious study at the expense of secular coursework. The state education department promulgated new regulations that require review of these schools by local public school officials and that threaten closure to schools found to be in noncompliance with state law. But constitutionally protected religious freedom issues are at play here.[48] A large and growing community is freely choosing these schools for their sons and is making financial sacrifices to exercise that choice. That some parents are unhappy with the schools does not negate the right of other parents to choose them. This is an issue with national implications.

Currently, the new regulations are facing litigation. In March 2023, the state’s trial court ruled that meeting the substantial equivalence requirement is actually a parent’s obligation, not a school’s.[49] The court noted that parents could comply with the requirement by arranging for tutoring for their sons in secular subjects or enrolling them in secular programs held on Sundays. Oddly, this could be accommodated by a well-designed ESA program. Unfortunately, New York State does not currently have such a program.

In June 2024, the New York appellate court reversed part of the trial court’s decision but accepted the premise that it is the parents, not schools, who must ensure that children receive a substantially equivalent education. While the overall outcome of the legal challenge remains to be seen, many claims levied against the boys’ yeshivas have been overstated. The state should find a way to judge these schools on their own merits while ensuring that it is not asking more of them than it does of public, district, and charter schools.

Selective Schools for the Academically Advanced

Many school districts in cities and large counties are grappling with legal challenges to their academically selective high schools. Usually, the schools’ admissions policies are challenged on equity grounds, and some have been accused of reverse discrimination in their attempts to diversify their student bodies.

In City Journal, MI fellow Renu Mukherjee has been documenting the push to scale back merit-based admissions to selective public high schools in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Virginia.[50] Schools with a clear goal of determining the racial makeup of their student body—and consciously excluding qualified Asian students—may have their policies and practices subject to review in the future. This would be an extension of the ruling in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, overturning affirmative action at the university level.[51] In February 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear such a case regarding Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, but other cases are winding their way through the courts.[52]

To respond to the needs of all students, highly selective high schools should be available to families. There has long been a place for programs for gifted or academically advanced students in our public school systems, and such programs should be made available to families under a universal arrangement.

An innovative and successful elementary/high school partnership exists on the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) campus in Boca Raton, Florida. The schools in this partnership are public schools, but, like charter schools, they are not part of a school district. Instead, the university governs them. Under Florida law, four public universities (Florida Atlantic, Florida A&M, University of Florida, and Florida State) are empowered to operate lab or charter schools. The A. D. Henderson University School (elementary) and the FAU High School might offer a model for others to follow.[53] The elementary school uses an admissions lottery designed to ensure a mix of genders, races, family income, and student ability, as determined by state law. Admission to the high school is extremely selective. It uses several measures of achievement and is designed to identify students who demonstrate “outstanding academic ability, a high degree of motivation and maturity, concern for others, and have the goal of acceleration to the university academic environment while in high school.”[54] While other states, such as Virginia and North Carolina, have laws allowing universities to establish laboratory schools, states that do not have these laws should consider adopting them. Conceivably, a public university could cooperate with an outside charter school, but that might weaken the type of control found at FAU schools.

Achievement levels at FAU schools are uniformly high, with economically disadvantaged students in the elementary school outperforming their peers statewide by 30+ percentage points.[55] Achievement at the high school is off the charts. In 2023, I reported that 90 students so far had earned their college degree from FAU in the same semester that they earned their high school diploma.[56] The average FAU High School student earns 100 college credits during high school.

Classical Education

What is a classical education? As Brandon McCoy stated in an issue brief for the Manhattan Institute: “‘Classical education’ ... differs profoundly from the instruction offered by modern district public schools. It is heavily oriented toward the liberal arts, guided by the Western canon, and grounded in Greek and Roman traditions of academic excellence.”[57]

Proponents of classical education are found in communities of all types across the country. Lester Long, who founded four classical charter schools in one of the nation’s and New York’s poorest communities, believes that “great instruction requires great curriculum.”[58] His schools use a curriculum that includes Latin in grade 3 and debate in grade 4. As summarized by some of the news coverage of these classical schools: “Long believes these subjects provide students with the three basic tenets of a classical education: understanding language, learning to think well, and learning to communicate well.”[59] Today, Long’s schools score as well on the New York State English language and math exams as any charters in the city and outperform surrounding district schools by a wide margin.[60]

The aforementioned Hawthorn School adopted a classical curriculum, infused with Catholic values, in one of New York State’s most affluent communities.

As the name implies, classical education is not new. Although it was present at the emergence of public education in the late 19th century, this philosophy of education faded from view in the mid-20th century but is currently enjoying a revival. Classical curriculum can be found in both secular and religious schools. It is found in Christian academies, homeschooling networks, and micro-schools.

Growth has occurred in the charter sector as well. Great Hearts Academies is a growing network of more than 20 classical charter schools in Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.[61] It also operates virtual academies for homeschooled children in Texas and Arizona. This past year, a new affiliate, Great Hearts Christos, opened its first faith-based classical schools in Arizona, taking advantage of that state’s universal choice ESA program. Great Hearts runs an annual institute for school leaders and master teachers who want to learn more about the content and practice of classical schools.

Trade- and Vocation-Focused Schooling

Workforce Preparation. Preparation for college entrance is not the only appropriate goal for our K–12 educational system. Even before the effects of the pandemic-era disruptions to schooling occurred, only 62% of high school graduates in the class of 2021 immediately enrolled in college.[62] Of those who enter college, many fail to earn a degree. In 2023, the completion rate for students who entered college six years earlier was only 62.2%.[63] Based on those entrance and completion rates (62% of 62%), one can estimate that less than 40% of recent high school graduates have earned a college degree within six years of graduating college.

Therefore, our K–12 schools must offer workforce prep as well as college prep. One size does not fit all when thinking about the appropriate goal of K–12 education. In a recent Manhattan Institute issue brief, Paul Vallas expounds on this need while presenting data about the appallingly low high school attendance rates since the pandemic closures and the recent nationwide growth in the high school dropout rate: “As of the 2020–21 school year, some 8.3 million high school students in the U.S. were participating in what are now called career and technical education (CTE) pathways.” These program offerings are limited, however, “because of funding priorities, geography, the availability of partners, and often the school’s geographic location. Few states have more than 20% of their students participating in any sort of CTE. And few programs offer paid work-study, which provides powerful incentives, especially for students from lower-income families.”[64]

Vallas describes three successful work-study programs in the public, charter, and religious school sectors. Studies have shown that salaried work-study for high school credit is an effective dropout prevention program and has given participants the necessary skills to enter the workforce straight out of high school.

Entrepreneurial Education. A small but notable project is striving to teach high school students about entrepreneurship, in both business and community service. Simultaneously, entrepreneurial education aims to expose students to the moral and ethical foundations that form the basis of the curriculum in classical schools. Founded by former Catholic seminarian and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Luke Burgis, the Catholic Entrepreneurship & Design Experience[65] is now operating in more than 30 high schools, including St. Mary’s High School on Long Island.[66] The program encourages students to explore their “own vocation—his or her unique way of creating value in the world” and seeks to prepare students to “live and create in service to others.”

High School–Level Military Academies. A small number of unique high schools (found in Chicago, New Orleans, and opening in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2024) combine college preparatory curriculum, CTE, and work-study or apprenticeship programs with mandatory participation in Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). These military-themed high schools emphasize character development, focusing on self-discipline, self-respect, and responsibility to others and one’s community. No obligation to enter military service is associated with these schools.

For example, at the New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy (NOMMA), charter school students in grades 8–12 participate in a JROTC program, are mentored by 11 retired U.S. Marine Corps veterans, and are engaged in physical training and character development.[67] The school includes a college preparatory curriculum and workforce preparation, incorporating internships in the maritime industry and the New Orleans police department. The school emphasizes meritocracy in all its endeavors, with promotion within the student cadet corps based on performance in both the classroom and in JROTC activities. At NOMMA, character, responsibility, self-discipline, and obligations to others are embedded in daily life. Values and character are not separate from education; they are at the heart of it.

Two major upheavals in educational policy have occurred in the last decade: the collapse of the bipartisan, Washington-based reform effort known as the Common Core; and the widespread school closures of 2020–22 amid the pandemic. Following the pandemic, states have taken the lead on meaningful school improvement strategies, especially the mostly red states that adopted universal school choice. At the same time, individual schools and school networks across the country have continued to do the important work of developing and implementing new and different models of success. These successful schools look different from one another, but they all approach the universal goal of expanded educational opportunity in ways that speak to their specific constituencies. Children differ in their educational needs, and families differ in their educational priorities. School choice arrangements recognize and are grounded in these simple truths.

Whatever the results of the coming national U.S. elections, the lessons for Washington are clear: the federal approach to education policy should be to follow, not lead, state initiatives. Federal funding should augment school choice policies in those states that have adopted such approaches, with money passed through to families rather than school districts. The states that have adopted universal school choice should continue to monitor their programs’ effectiveness and make necessary improvements. Other states should look to these examples as they consider whether their efforts are improving schools in their communities.

The public, particularly the parents of school-age children, should look to the diverse educational opportunities being created in universal-choice states and ask why they do not see these novel approaches in their states.

The organization of publicly supported schooling will vary by state. Though no one best system exists, all states should accept the variability of educational needs and priorities and embrace the form of educational pluralism that fits the political preferences of its residents. If they do not, families will vote with their feet.

Common Values and Economic Efficiency

A stable and democratic society is impossible without widespread acceptance of some common set of values and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens. Education contributes to both. In consequence, the gain from the education of a child accrues not only to the child or to his parents but to other members of the society; the education of my child contributes to other people’s welfare by promoting a stable and democratic society. Yet it is not feasible to identify the particular individuals (or families) benefited or the money value of the benefit and so to charge for the services rendered. There is therefore a significant “neighborhood effect.”

—Milton Friedman, 1955[68]

The concept of school choice entered the public policy debate in the mid-1950s as an application of the economic concept of public goods—those goods or services that produce benefits to the collective and to individuals. However, public goods present a free-rider problem: everyone benefits from the service, whether they pay for it or not, incentivizing some not to contribute at all. These types of goods are most efficiently funded by a public tax. Both public and private schools have this collective, or public, aspect.

In presenting his concept of educational vouchers, Milton Friedman referred to the common need for an educated citizenry in a democracy as a “neighborhood effect.” Thus, even the most conservative educational financing policy proposal—school vouchers—requires public funding of at least some portion of the cost of education. If left to the private market alone, individuals might not purchase enough education to fulfill this critical common need. Friedman saw this as the economic rationale for government funding of education. This did not, however, imply that government must administer education. In his vision, public financing of schools through a voucher system could support an array of service providers in the education sector—private, religious, and state and local governments.

Friedman grounded his argument in two critical, yet often overlooked, points.

The first is that all education is neither purely public nor purely private; it is a hybrid. Thus, families have a direct incentive to find the best education for their own children so that they might reap the benefits themselves. This is true for families who use private schools and for families who seek the best public school or district for their children.

The second point is that outcomes, or intended outcomes, matter. Friedman offers a rationale for public financing of general education because it promises to deliver some common set of values and a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens.

One might ask at this point: What is the public nature of schools that fail to prepare their students to be informed and capable members of a functioning democracy, or to be capable economic actors who are able to support themselves and their families?

Fairness and Equity

In the 1970s, a novel approach to and rationale for school choice emerged from the center-left. At that time, a flurry of legal action argued that the states’ systems of funding schools were not equitable and were out of compliance with state constitutions. These types of cases continue to this day, although they have been focused on the adequacy of state education funding rather than the equitable distribution of that funding.

California was one of the states facing the 1970s wave of equity challenges. Berkeley law professor John Coons was part of a team that crafted a legal argument for “district power equalizing,”[69] in which a state would revise its aid formulas to be in inverse relation to the districts’ wealth.[70] Under the system being challenged, a wealthy district could raise more local money with a property tax rate that was the same as that of a poorer district. Proponents in the case argued that this was a disadvantage for students in districts with lower incomes.[71] In time, Coons and others extended the concept of district power equalizing to “family power equalizing,” whereby state education aid would flow directly to families, with means tests or adjustments for family income.[72]

Over a lengthy career of advancing the rationale for school choice, Coons clearly believed that there was more to it than economic efficiency. He argued that shifting educational authority from government to parents is based on “basic beliefs about the dignity of the person, the rights of children, and the sanctity of the family; it is a shift that also promises a harvest of social trust as the experience of responsibility is extended to all income classes.”[73] Coons’s late-1970s attempt to get a school choice referendum in California failed,[74] but his ideas soon became the basis of many local and state voucher programs enacted in the 1980s and 1990s.

Another relevant phenomenon occurred in large cities in the 1970s: Catholic school systems across the country experienced their first period of enrollment decline due to Catholic out-migration from the old ethnic urban enclaves to the growing suburbs.[75] As those families left, some Catholic schools remained in operation, sustained by black and Hispanic families of modest means seeking alternatives to the low-performing neighborhood public schools in their communities. They were willing to pay the modest tuition of the Catholic schools to get a better chance for their children and found schools that accepted them, whether they were Catholic or not.

The higher performance of these schools with the “disadvantaged” children compared with the local public schools entered the public debate and eventually contributed to Milwaukee adopting the first school voucher program in 1989.[76] The legislation for this program was drawn up by African American state senator and civil rights leader Polly Williams.[77] In time, it expanded to include additional cities in Wisconsin. Cities in other states, including Cleveland and Washington, DC, adopted similar programs.

The notion of school choice as a civil rights or social-justice issue remained the prime rationale for school choice programs until recently, when universal school choice rose to greater prominence. Still, the adoption of these urban voucher programs serving children of color from poorer families motivated Democratic officials’ embrace of charter schools.

Educational Pluralism and the Content/Culture of Public Schooling

Ashley Berner of Johns Hopkins University has been perhaps the strongest proponent of educational pluralism, which she explored in her 2017 book Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School[78] and in a 2019 report for the Manhattan Institute.[79] She has consistently argued that educational pluralism is not simply another name for school choice; rather, choice is one key component of a truly pluralistic approach to education. Berner points out that in most democratic nations,“the state funds and regulates, but does not necessarily operate, a mosaic of schools”[80] and that the regulation, often in the form of curricular and assessment standards, is as critical to their success as is family choice of schools.

Berner sees the education debate in the U.S. as being fought between two poles: libertarian and statist. Educational pluralism, as practiced in many democracies, “stands firmly in the center, affirming both distinctive cultures as well as robust public accountability.”[81] She recognizes that our constitutional arrangement and federalist system limit the application of national standards like those in nations with centrally controlled educational systems. But Berner has argued that cultural pluralism could be applied by individual states. Take standardized testing as an example. In 2019, Indiana required all private schools to administer the annual state exams, whether they accepted public funding or not. Similarly, Florida’s tax credit program required that students attending private schools with the help of scholarships funded by those credits participate in annual state testing. Arizona, by contrast, did not require their students in any of the three tax credit programs in place at the time to participate in state testing.[82] This is genuine pluralism.

Since the aforementioned writings of Berner, school choice—absent the type of curriculum standards or academic accountability associated with educational pluralism—has been ascendant. Yet in the 18 states[83] that have no form of school choice beyond charter schools, the middle-ground position advocated by Berner might provide a way forward.

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