OPINION:
When I attended a very-different-from-today’s-schools public school in suburban Maryland, there was a public service announcement on TV that asked: “It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”
I was usually in bed at that hour on “school nights,” but that question might be put a different way today: “It’s 9 a.m. Do you know what your children are being taught?”
Many parents don’t have a clue what is being fed into their children’s minds and spirits, or they learn after the fact. We’ve seen the news reports of parents showing up at school board meetings to complain, but usually after the fact and with little effect.
Most people are familiar with the debates over transgender athletes on female sports teams and in girls’ locker rooms, gender identity and other social subjects. How many parents know about subjects being taught that come from a secular-progressive worldview?
According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (known as the Nation’s Report Card), 9-year-old children are doing better in reading and math than children their age did in previous years, but older children (13 and up), who came through the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, continue to stagnate in those subjects.
School choice is sweeping the country, except in some states run by Democrats who are beholden to the teachers unions and their political donations. They favor “choice” when it comes to abortion but deny it to poor children in underperforming public schools.
For parents who might struggle with the cost of private schools, especially in states that won’t allow this option, a new federal law might help.
It’s called the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC), also known as the Education Freedom Tax Credit. Starting on Jan. 1, 2027, taxpayers will be able to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 annually for donations to qualified programs that grant scholarships.
The program even allows religious schools to participate and will pay for tuition, tutoring, technology, transportation and services for children with special needs.
According to David Bass of the Philanthropy Roundtable, “More than two dozen states have already opted in and additional states are under pressure to follow. If fully implemented across the country, the program would cover roughly 90 percent of K-12 students.”
This is where philanthropy can do some of its best work. Bass believes the next 18 months are crucial to the program’s success because it will inevitably face political pressure from opponents.
The public school system may be the last and largest remaining monopoly in the country. Courts have broken up other monopolies, but only parents have the power to break up the public school monopoly — by depriving it of the “raw material.” It’s called competition, which has worked well in just about every other field. It can also work in education and is starting to, in states with school choice options.
Stories about the transformation of public school children who have managed to escape their underperforming schools for private ones are starting to get the public’s attention. The media mostly ignore them, but word is getting around, especially to poor and minority parents who want their children to have a bright future.
A significant side benefit would be children who grow up loving America, believing in capitalism and not joining the Democratic Socialists of America.
Thanks to school choice and the FSTC law, we may finally see a system that puts children and the country first, not the teacher’s unions and the agenda of the secular progressives.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
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