I grew up in a blue collar home in the inner city Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. My parents struggled to give me the first four primary school years in a parochial school. Then they had to send me to  a public school. They moved out of Dorchester, at great sacrifice and hardship, to make sure I attended a good public school.

Parents shouldn’t have to uproot their families to make sure their children get good educations. America needs to give parents more choice in their children’s schooling. It’ll be good for children and good for the country.

A recent study  of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program demonstrated there is a connection between the lowering of the crime rate and the implementation of school choice. According to Milwaukee’s MacIver Institute, a University of Arkansas study found students who families used vouchers to send them to a private high school for all four years “were 75 percent less likely to commit a felony, 56-78 percent less likely to commit a misdemeanor, and 21-50 percent less likely to be accused of any crime, compared to similar public school students.”

Parents, the Child’s First School

School choice gives more children a future and lowers the crime rate. The evidence is clear. Everyone wins. Just as important, school choice recognizes that parents are the first teachers. That’s why I also call it parental choice.

The family is the child’s first school and his parents his first teachers. They may delegate their children’s formal schooling to a school outside the home but they still have the duty and the right to guide their children’s education.

This is the way St. John Paul II explains it. In Familiaris Consortio (“The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World”), he writes:

The right and duty of parents to give education is essential, since it is connected with the transmission of human life; it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; it is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others.

In his Letter to Families, John Paul II notes that parents have “a fundamental competence in this area; they are educators because they are parents.” In other words, precisely because the parents know and love their children, they know what’s best for them.

The public school system began with families pooling resources in small community schools that reflected their beliefs and their requirements for education. Now, the top-down federal educational model has removed authority and control from parents and local communities. And it’s failing, as Statistics and experience confirm. This latest study showing the connection with the crime rate is one more example of the urgent need for real educational reform.

Parentized Education

Parental or School choice educational reform will return the leadership of our National educational endeavor to parents and the local community. Some opponents allege that supporters want to “privatize” education — using that term in a disparaging manner. In fact, it is an effort to “parentize” education, by affirming that the family is the first school and parents are the first teachers.

Those who oppose school choice often claim that supporters of school choice are against public schools. We’re not. We simply call for all parents to have access to good public, private, parochial, virtual, classical, charter and home schools.

That can be accomplished through enabling legislation which makes it possible for all parents, no matter what their socio-economic situation, to choose where to send their children to school. As a constitutional lawyer I know this can be done in a constitutionally sound way through properly drafted voucher legislation, tax credits, or opportunity scholarships. Parents shouldn’t have to uproot a family, the way my dear parents did, to make sure their children get a good education.

School Choice is a matter of real social justice — not the leftist ideology masquerading as social justice these days. The opposition by the leadership of the teacher’s unions shows how far these mediating associations have strayed from their proper social role. Some of these leaders seem less concerned about poor children getting a good education than they are about maintaining control over a system which is failing. Lower crime rates is one more reason for school choice — but it’s not the only one.