Abstract
The post–common school era has ushered in deep confusion in educational policy. Myriad alternatives to ‘The One Best System’ (Tyack, 1974) attract extreme and implausible claims on all sides. The two works reviewed here seek to un-muddle our thinking on two of these alternatives, charter schools and homeschooling.
Ben-Porath and Johanek address three sets of questions posed by supporters and critics of charter schools. First, who is principally responsible for children’s education? Should parents’ interests trump those of the State? Second, how are we to balance the creative freedom needed for innovation against demands of public accountability? Third, will the potential exclusivity of charter schools undercut the inclusivity of a democratic political order? For each, the authors accurately summarize the principal arguments advanced by supporters and opponents of charters and offer a sampling of relevant evidence. The evidence, however, is not dispositive, and the authors do not resolve the conceptual issues in dispute between the two sides.
The discussion of parental versus state authority illustrates this methodological deficit. On the parental authority side, the authors cite the claim that individual rather than collective choices are more likely to meet children’s interests and parents’ goals; the argument that public schools are unwieldy and resistant to change; and the argument that education belongs to the sphere of family life which should be protected from state intrusion. These arguments, they contend, are weak because parents’ options are restricted, information about the relative merits of different options is inadequate, and the continuing power of conventional public schools prevents the emergence of a true educational market. They point out that children’s and parents’ interests might diverge but then inexplicably set that potential conflict aside as ‘beyond the scope of the current discussion’.
On the side of state authority, they cite the importance of broader social aims such as democratic citizenship, equality of opportunity, a ‘shared civic space’, and other public goods. Charter schools are alleged to undermine these aims because of their focus on competition for students, their emphasis on individualistic outcomes such as test scores, and their affiliation with non-public entities (including for-profit companies). These objections, however, do not apply to all charters: many explicitly foster inclusion, citizenship, and deep learning, and many are also sponsored by public organizations (including universities and school districts).
The problem is that the empirical evidence is not strong enough to satisfactorily address either set of normative claims. It does not show unequivocally that either school type is inherently unable to achieve the goals espoused by advocates of the other. Absent any more decisive conclusion about the priority of either set of goals, what can we as a society do but try to ensure both types of public institutions – the one ‘chartered’ and the other not – do both as effectively as possible?
A second problem with Ben-Porath and Johanek’s approach is that there are myriad educational options besides charter schools: magnet schools, specialized programming such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and fine arts, homeschooling, inter-district public school choice, and intra-district choice, to name just a few. All three questions posed by the authors apply equally to these other options. ‘Making up our minds’ requires evaluation of all of these options and consideration of each within the local contexts that parents, families, and legislators must take into account in their decision-making process. Without a clear normative framework, we are destined to flounder.
Dwyer and Peters confront equally polarized views on homeschooling. Critics urge restrictions, contending that homeschooling limits students’ social and academic development and weakens public schools. Supporters, meanwhile, claim that homeschooled students perform better academically than their peers and have just as much opportunity for socialization and civic participation. One prominent advocacy group, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), claims that any attempt at regulation encroaches on family rights and parental authority.
To address this conflict, the authors adopt a strategy quite different from that of Ben-Porath and Johanek. Rather than enumerate arguments and counterarguments, Dwyer and Peters tackle the central conceptual issue head on: the relationship between state responsibility, parental authority, and the rights and interests of children. Having concluded children’s interests take precedence over those of parents and the State, they fill in the content of interests with a sketch of the basic goods that education provides, and only then address policy questions. Also unlike Ben-Porath and Johanek, they offer specific proposals for regulation which take into account both the normative analysis and practical considerations such as cost, efficacy, and political will.
The authors begin with a critique of competing claims by parentalists (those who hold that authority over children is a parent’s autonomy right) and liberal statists (those who hold that children are a resource to be molded to support democratic institutions). Children, they counter, are distinct persons, with rights and interests that are not trumped by those of either parents or society as a whole. Intuitively, we recognize children’s limited capacity for reasoning and self-direction and hence acknowledge the need for adult authority. But from that premise, one cannot infer that either parents or the state control children as a matter of right any more than one would for the guardian of an incapacitated adult. In both cases, the authority is fiduciary and hence legitimate only insofar as it protects the interests of the person whose autonomy is being restricted.
Parentalists might argue that even if true, the point is moot, since parents know better than anyone else what a child’s interests are. In doing so, however, they inadvertently reveal their own belief that they know children’s interests – not just for their own children but for others as well. If the State asserts that in general parents know best, then it should be able to determine whether that presumed competence holds in particular cases and intervene where it doesn’t.
So far, so good. But the next stage of the argument – children’s education-related interests – is trickier to pull off. The goods listed – cognitive development; knowledge and beliefs; social interaction; identity formation; family relationships; and physical, psychological, and emotional security – are described in very general terms, to avoid taking sides among competing defensible conceptions of how these goods can be realized. This will make it harder to ascertain whether homeschooled students are receiving the goods, and consequently to craft regulation.
Furthermore, the list doesn’t include any collective goods. Wouldn’t statists argue that future citizens have a stake in sustaining the democratic order and consequently an interest in citizenship? If goods of this type are added, would they not open the door to all kinds of trade-offs between children’s interests and broader societal interests – a trade-off the authors expressly set out to avoid?
The authors’ discussion of policy addresses both of these potential difficulties. They begin by asking whether the state is justified in forcing children to leave home to be educated. Their answer is that if the rights of the child take precedence, then the state faces a high burden of justification. The international empirical literature on homeschooling, though fraught with methodological difficulties, nonetheless shows that it can provide basic educational goods, and consequently the state cannot forbid the practice.
Statists, of course, will object that the list should include collective goods – for example, a more tolerant citizenry. Wouldn’t children have to be sent to school to achieve this? Dwyer and Peters argue that for collective goods, if compulsion is needed then it should be applied first to adults; only if they subject themselves to this regimen should it be applied to those with diminished autonomy. It is freedom rights of children, not parents’ rights, that block the demands of liberal statists.
The right of children to be homeschooled, however, does not trump the state’s regulatory authority, and this is the crux of the book’s argument. When homeschooling fails to provide basic educational goods, parents have failed in their fiduciary duty, and the rights which support homeschooling now require state intervention. But how far can the state go, based on the very generic account of basic educational goods? Dwyer and Peters propose a two-part regulatory framework aimed at protecting children’s rights to educational goods while minimizing intrusion and prescriptive requirements: first, criteria parents would have to satisfy before they commence homeschooling and second, periodic review to assess children’s learning. To qualify for homeschooling, parents would have to pass a background check and demonstrate an adequate academic background and teaching aptitude. The authors also suggest they be required to complete a substantial homeschool training program. An adequate academic background for homeschooling in the elementary grades is defined as a high school diploma or GED (General Education Development) certificate; for higher grades, a college degree.
This standard seems reasonable on its face, but those committed to homeschooling may object that it doesn’t account for second-generation homeschoolers who may be well educated but not have sought formal credentials. Some may view educational credentials as a proxy for learning, but those who see learning more broadly are bound to be skeptical. If adequate academic background is difficult to assess, teaching aptitude is even more so.
For parents of children who are too young to have been enrolled in formal schooling, teaching aptitude would be evaluated by assessing the child’s early learning, presumably using standardized assessments that measure reading readiness and early reading skills. For many children, these would provide objective evidence of what they have been taught at home. Prospective homeschoolers might worry, however, that since these instruments are normed over a large population, they do not take into account developmental differences, learning styles, or the impact of disabilities. Arguably the very feature that protects against subjectivity in the decision who should be allowed to homeschool introduces a bias potentially harmful to the most vulnerable.
For parents of older children, teaching aptitude would be determined by assessment of a modest home learning project. Such an assessment would be individualized and could be adapted to the child’s developmental trajectory. The lack of a fixed standard, however, opens it to the charge of subjectivity and thus potentially disqualifies it for a high-stakes decision such as determining fitness for homeschooling.
Teaching aptitude, in short, poses a dilemma for Dwyer and Peters. If the measure of a child’s learning is individualized, it is difficult to eliminate subjectivity; but an objective measure that compares a child’s learning against that of age peers is too rigid.
The second part of the regulatory framework, periodic review of homeschooled students’ progress, faces the same difficulty. The authors propose an informal face-to-face meeting with an evaluator who is objective and knowledgeable about homeschooling. This meeting would include an interview with the child, a practical demonstration of academic skill, and a review of a portfolio of the child’s work. Although this approach seems reasonable, it is potentially vulnerable to the same objections as the initial assessment of teaching aptitude: on one hand, subjectivity; on the other, insensitivity to the child’s developmental trajectory.
One way for the authors to avoid both objections is to lower the stakes of the decision. All assessments would be treated as diagnostic rather than evaluative. Instead of determining who is allowed to homeschool and who is not, results could be used for informational purposes. Recommendations for curriculum, teaching strategies, and pedagogical training would provide support for homeschoolers and thus avoid using the power of the state to enforce an educational orthodoxy which many families undertake homeschooling to avoid. This is the kind of approach reasonable homeschoolers ought to support. Thoughtfully implemented, this approach would benefit children and parents without bias or undue intrusion by the State.
Dwyer and Peters might object that this move vitiates the regulatory regimen they propose, robbing the State of any power to intervene in cases of serious educational neglect. But an ameliorative strategy is not nugatory. On the contrary, it is employed in a variety of other contexts, including public schools. If it is the strategy of choice for correcting districting deficits in the State’s own educational institutions, why should it not be deployed for education in families?
As the political appeal of what supporters once dubbed ‘The One Best System’ declines, it is increasingly difficult to resolve policy disputes solely through appeal to empirical evidence. Dwyer and Peters’ rights framework and policy recommendations demonstrate the vital importance of philosophical inquiry.
The charter school debate would benefit from this approach. If the justification for school choice were grounded in children’s right rather than parental choice and the doctrine of markets, it would be much easier to sort out the legitimacy of charter school advocates’ claims and critics’ objections, and an unbiased regulatory framework would be easy to construct. If Ben-Porath and Johanek had tackled conceptual issues first, the tangled disputes around charter schools could have been unraveled more successfully.