Sadly, parental rights frighten those who want government to have total control over what children are allowed to learn. A recent article in Harvard Magazine entitled “The Risks of Homeschooling” demonstrates just how extreme this elitist condescension can get. It quotes Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet arguing for banning homeschooling because she “thinks [it’s] dangerous” for parents to “have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18.” According to Bartholet, “it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
That view, however, is contrary to two centuries of constitutional precedent protecting parents’ fundamental rights to raise and educate their children. As the Court held in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1923),
The fundamental theory of liberty 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.
And for those parents who make the choice to give their children a religious upbringing, that is a choice that substantially benefits society; as President George Washington exhorted his fellow citizens in his Farewell Address of 1796, “let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
The urgency of school choice is all the more important—vital—for parents, often single mothers, trapped in poverty. And for too many kids trapped in failing schools, frightened and without options.
In my eight years in the Senate, the legislation I’m most proud of passing was legislation to expand school choice. In 2017, as a part of the historic tax cut we passed, I offered an amendment that became the only amendment to pass on the Senate floor that added anything to the bill. The amendment concerned college 529 plans, tax-advantaged savings plans that allow parents and grandparents to save for the college expenses of their kids and grandkids. My amendment expanded 529 plans to include K–12 as well.
It was after midnight when we voted. At the time, there were fifty-two Republicans in the Senate. As the votes came in, two Republican Senators voted no. At that point, Senate floor staff picked up the phone and called the vice president, who was at the residence at the time. They told him it looked like we needed his vote to break the tie, and he began to head to the Capitol.
Then, Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, voted yes. An audible gasp could be heard in the well of the Senate. At which point, Senate floor staff called the vice president and told his staff, “We got Manchin; it looks like we don’t need the vice president’s vote.” So he turned his motorcade around and began heading back to the residence.
When Manchin returned to his desk, Democrats surrounded him. They were upset—the teachers-union bosses were going to be upset—and they upbraided him for daring to vote against them. A few minutes later, Joe sheepishly walked down to the front and changed his vote to a “no.”
So the Senate floor staff called the vice president’s office again… and for a second time, he turned his motorcade around. It takes about twenty minutes to get from the Naval Observatory (the vice president’s residence) to the Capitol. Twenty minutes later, Vice President Pence walked onto the floor, took the presiding chair, and said, “the ayes being fifty, the nays being fifty, the chamber being equally divided, the presiding officer votes in the affirmative, and the amendment is adopted.”
And with that, in the very early hours of the morning, the Senate passed what remains the most significant federal school-choice legislation ever passed. President Trump signed it into law, and today it allows parents and grandparents to save in a tax-advantaged account and then spend up to $10,000 per student, per year on tuition for public school, private school, religious school, parochial school—whatever the parent and student chooses. More than 75 percent of the families with 529 plans earn $150,000 per year or less, and my amendment potentially benefits up to 50 million school kids nationwide.
But still, far too many low-income students remain trapped in schools where they have little hope of learning. The solution of most Democratic Party politicians (and the teachers union bosses to whom they defer) is inevitably just more taxpayer money for the public schools. That can help, but, as the facts demonstrate, more money alone does not solve problems. For example, in the District of Columbia, taxpayers pay over $27,000 per student to fund public schools, and yet too many of the D.C. public schools produce dismal results. The kids and parents understand this; that’s why 14,000 more students have applied for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships (perennially underfunded by Congress) than there are scholarships available, and that’s why more than 11,000 D.C. students are currently stuck on the charter-school wait-list.
Add to that rampant crime, drugs, and violence in too many inner-city schools, and the desperate situation children face can be overwhelming. In the Cleveland public schools, in the 1990s—staggeringly—a student entering ninth grade was statistically more likely to be a victim of violent crime at school than he or she was to graduate on time in four years. Thanks to heroic leadership by local leaders, that led the State of Ohio
