Abstract
School choice is often framed as an issue concerning deregulation versus regulation, private interests versus public responsibility, and parental rights versus democratic control. But controversial social issues are seldom binary, as polarized politicking presents them as being, and school choice is no exception.
Homeschooling and Making Up Our Mind both do an admirable job of destabilizing the binary ways that school choice is characterized in the public sphere. Both books show that we have had school choice since before the founding of our country, and that a variety of possible mechanisms and arrangements fall under the umbrella of ‘choice’. Vouchers and charters occupy much of the public debate, but also at issue are homeschooling, parents’ decisions between publics, moving residence for a preferable school zone, and opting to go private. In addition, both books consider a variety of values that might bear on various arrangements: most notably, the interests of children themselves, but also the primacy of the family and parental authority over educational decision-making, and democratic values like inclusion, desegregation, and equality of opportunity.
Interestingly though, the two books adopt very different approaches to theorizing the complexity of school choice. In Homeschooling, Dwyer and Peters offer a rigorous philosophical treatment of the proper role of the state in education policy, arguing for a strongly child-centered view. According to them, laws that require schooling must be justified with reference to the well-being of the particular child compelled to participate; that is, schooling must be justified from within the State’s parens patriae role.
Considerations of social benefits like a stronger economy or a more tolerant citizenry (relevant under the State’s police power role), or considerations of parental interests and preferences, are thus inappropriate when determining whether and how to educate children. As Dwyer and Peters acknowledge, many education theorists have implicitly disagreed with their theoretical stance, assuming that it is permissible for the State to regard the interests of children as one consideration among many that must be balanced in determining how to deliver educational goods. Many think that the State has a legitimate interest in a civically educated, technically skilled citizenry disposed to contribute to the social good, for example.
Indeed, in Making Up Our Mind, Ben-Porath and Johanek instead advocate a ‘mixed approach’ when it comes to the values in play and the possible authorities with respect to them – giving the interests of children priority, they recommend a ‘balanced approach’ that gives both the state and parents responsibility for children’s education. Considering the multiple stakeholders, policy designs, and values, they argue that school choice is really ‘about which shared vision we seek to construct’ (MM, p. 19).
Reading these two approaches side-by-side raises interesting methodological questions about how to approach educational policy in general. Ought the flourishing of children to be normatively basic, and if so, to what degree ought it to constrain the pursuit of other considerations? Is there room for using our educational system for pursuing the social good? How much should the politics of education policy, and increasing divisiveness in politics and politicking, affect approaches to education policy and practice today?
Homeschooling provides a nice example of how normative theory might constrain educational policy and practice. The authors argue that when the State is determining whether and how to compel students to attend school, it must proceed in a way that reflects what autonomous individuals would choose for themselves, from the perspective of self-interest. The self-interested perspective is one aimed at securing the various basic goods of well-being: including cognitive/intellectual development; knowledge and beliefs; social interaction; a solid basis of identity formation; good family relationships; physical, psychological, emotional security; and equality. The State may only consider whether compelling a particular child is necessary for securing basic goods for her. Homeschooling can be justified from this perspective, with certain regulatory protections in place, since attending school in our current environment is not necessary to ensure the delivery of basic goods.
One might worry that this approach too easily sacrifices legitimate social interests in education (leaving to the side, for now, parental interests). After all, society collectively has a stake in children growing up to understand and respect the law, to actively participate in civic society, and to apply themselves to useful pursuits. Why not think that it can be legitimate to incorporate these goals into education policy?
First, the authors persuasively illustrate the difficulty in finding a theoretical justification for using the education of children to benefit others. Children are independent persons with their own interests, and it is difficult to explain how those interests could be systematically subverted for the sake of others’ interests. Schooling, and more broadly, curricula, are physically, intellectually, and socially confining and have long-term effects. They are implicated in shaping the identities of children, who are themselves not yet autonomous but have an interest in becoming so.
Second, the account of well-being that the authors present has the potential to find social goods strongly relevant to individual children’s well-being. The authors often emphasize the extent to which the police power and the parens patriae roles of the State come into sharp tension: [I]n its police-power role, the state might [. . .] impose a curriculum aimed at producing a lot of docile future workers who will fill a pressing societal need (e.g. miners). In its parens patriae role, in contrast, the state would design a curriculum aimed at giving every child a flourishing life, so each child is able to pursue careers or other endeavors with his or her talents and abilities as well as have an enjoyable time while in school. There can be overlap between these two aims [. . .] but the two approaches are likely to lead to significantly differing schooling experiences for children. (HS, p. 153)
The practical implications of the distinction between these two state roles is perhaps overdrawn. As some have recognized, individual well-being is importantly nested within social environments and relationships. Individuals can live well because the social environment makes possible various forms of individual doings and beings. To that extent at least, how others fare is deeply connected with how we ourselves fare. For children to live good lives, they depend on a world in which others fare well, too.
Even more strongly, many believe that having a good life directly requires the disposition to treat others well. The authors’ acknowledgements of the importance of sociality in a person’s life, as well as the potential for interesting and challenging employment and good family relationships, implicitly recognize the connection between individual well-being and the social good. It would be worthwhile to explore not merely to what extent the State’s dual roles can diverge, but also how even a singular focus on child well-being does not require sacrificing the common good.
Let me turn now to discuss Making Up Our Mind, which examines how multiple stakeholders can legitimately shape school choice policy. In my home state of Florida, as in many states, the topic of school choice occupies much of the public debate about education. Over 650 charter schools currently exist across the state, as well as five educational choice programs. Florida has two tax credit scholarship programs, including the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, which is one the largest school choice programs in the nation.
Florida has one educational savings account program and two voucher programs. The McKay Scholarship Program for Students with Disabilities is a voucher program that allows students with disabilities or 504 plans to receive vouchers to attend private schools or different public schools. The most recent voucher program to emerge, the Family Empowerment Scholarship (2019), was created, in part, to alleviate the waitlist for the Tax Credit Scholarship Program. It is paid for out of the state’s general fund, rather than through a tax credit scheme. This voucher program is aimed at students who are among the least well off, as determined by families’ eligibility for social assistance, poverty levels, or a child’s presence in the foster care system. Once students receive this scholarship, they remain eligible for it through high school graduation, regardless of parental income. Only 18,000 students will be permitted in the program during its first year, but more will be permitted each subsequent year.
The influence of the politicking surrounding these Florida programs has been polarizing because of the bullheaded pursuit of what state political leaders call ‘universal choice’, and it has been damaging because of its disproportionately large presence in the public debate regarding Florida education policy in general. These realities lead me to wonder whether the role of the politicking itself that surrounds school choice is given short shrift in Making Up Our Mind. On the ground, it doesn’t appear that people are undecided about school choice; it’s that many people’s minds are already made up and a political battle has ensued.
Some of us are interested in the circumstances of the least advantaged children, and are open to choice schemes that really improve the educational circumstances of those children. No doubt some children who participate in Title I charters and the Florida McKay voucher program for students with disabilities really do benefit from the additional options made available through these choice programs. But many are really not interested in the least advantaged children. The Family Empowerment Scholarship voucher program, for instance, has inched up the minimum household income level that qualifies one for a school voucher from 260% of the poverty line (in the Florida tax scholarship program) to 300% of the poverty line. This incremental change, especially as it increases over time, drastically changes the nature of the pool of eligible children.
Schools will always have an incentive to attract the students who are easiest to teach (i.e. those who are least impoverished), so that as the eligibility bar is raised, the most disadvantaged students will be left behind. The claim that voucher programs target the least advantaged thus becomes less believable over time, as moves toward universal choice ensue.
Perhaps more alarming, as a result of the political discussion, school choice comes off as the overwhelming priority in Florida educational policy. I find it stunning that the choice movement gets as much air time in the public sphere as it does, when 90% of students are still attending public school. Why does this issue occupy so much space in the public sphere of discussion, and is that warranted? Equally important issues in education policy in Florida are ongoing – teacher education, raises, certification, physical plant needs in the public schools, and continued racial segregation in areas of the state, for example. The politics of school choice occupy disproportionate air time and political energy. A cynic might even say that the politics of choice intentionally deflect attention from equally, if not more, important issues.
The nuanced thinking that Ben-Porath and Johanek offer for thinking through what really matters from the philosophical and ethical perspectives advances the debate. But using Florida as a barometer for what is happening in states with more contentious school choice debates, politicking arises as a major factor in the school choice debate.
How, then, are the politics of school choice to be factored into our normative theorizing about policy? Dwyer and Peters seem to have a clear answer: all policy must be directed at children’s flourishing. But, they also acknowledge the practical difficulties of instantiating their specific policy recommendations, given the political heft of groups like the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Ben-Porath and Johanek’s approach appears more deferential to the political process, and yet the influence of politics on school reform still seems underappreciated. Reconciling theory with practice is a perennial difficulty, with these two books offering very different, and provocative, approaches.