Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. A new school year is underway, but what's making headlines is where a number of students are not going. Extending what has become a multi-year trend now, more families are opting out of public education, choosing instead alternatives like private schools and homeschooling. Most news coverage attributes this exodus to things like low birth rates, lingering effects of the COVID pandemic, funding issues, and families leaving cities.
However, a recent episode of the New York Times podcast, The Daily, offered a more clarifying take. According to education reporter Dana Goldstein, there's been a notable change in how parents think about educating their children. And rather than just sending their kids to the assigned public school in their zip code, parents are choosing options that better meet the individual needs of their children and ensure a positive culture for learning and growth. And to find such settings, they're turning to private and religious schools, home schools, and micro schools, a new kind of one-room school that's been popping up ever since the pandemic. And now, since 18 states have advanced school choice policies, more parents are able to consider other options.
Now Goldstein sized up the shift away from government education this way, quote, if you see education as an issue of parental empowerment and parental rights, you're going to love the moment we're in with the expansion of vouchers and private school choice.
However, it's worth pointing out that this is in deep contradiction to some of the fundamental founding principles of public education in the United States, end quote. The idea of public education, she went on to say, is to bring children together from across demographic differences to forge common skills and values for civic life. And of course, she's right in that. But what she fails to mention is that parents have just had enough. Of being removed from the process and treated as if their children somehow belonged to the state, not them.
Simply put, public schooling no longer recognizes the fundamental role that parents have in their children's lives and in their education. In many cases, parents are treated as enemies of the whole process, but parents have the primary responsibility to raise and educate their children, and schools should be working in harmony with them, not against them. In other words, the civic mission of public schools should be to support parents in their family mission. And there should not be a conflict here, but there is. The very same week this episode of the Daily Podcast aired, the Loudoun County School District, which has frustrated parents for years with its transgender policies, made the news yet again.
The district continues to blatantly disregard Title IX, which bars transgender students from using the bathroom or competing in school sports opposite their sex. And in Colorado, a high school teacher was discovered to have groomed a student for years, convincing her that she was gay and to emancipate from her parents. The Jefferson County School District not only covered this up, it continued to do so even after the student moved in with the teacher. And those are just two of the many, many news stories from the last few years. No wonder parents are looking elsewhere.
And as Goldstein rightly noted in the podcast, the demand for alternatives is diverse, crossing both demographic and political lines. As it turns out, education choice is not at odds with the ideal of reaching across differences, as her report suggested. It's actually a way to accomplish that goal while valuing the parents.
Now, for the record, private schools can also interfere with parental rights and responsibilities. In fact, many Christian schools hide behind marketing language about partnering with parents, but never really do so. In practice, this means accepting their tuition dollars, their donations, and their volunteer hours, but keeping them completely out of the process or even punishing them whenever they provide negative feedback. Christians have a golden opportunity here to push back on the state-run status quo system and to advance a parent-directed vision for education. It's encouraging that so many more parents are catching this vision and that there's a whole new landscape of parental choice options that have emerged.
At the same time, we have to establish these alternatives in a true and sound vision of what education truly is, and that includes the significant and essential role of parents. If it's done well, Christian education in various forms will play a distinct and vital role in cultural renewal. Existing and new schools can meet the educational needs of many more students in this country while also coming alongside parents in their mission. This will require visionary educational leadership to build Christian alternatives that prioritize biblical faithfulness, excellence, and a heart of service to parents and communities. We are at an educational crossroads in this country, and Christians can help loosen the stranglehold of the state over education.
Even better, we can offer something better if we love and serve our neighbors with options that allow parents to direct their children's steps. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast and for more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment. Go to breakpoint.org. What makes a Christian education Christian?
Well, a Christian education is not just education with more rules and chapel and Bible verses. It is Christian worldview formation. If you're an educator, you have to know that every student that you teach is being shaped by all kinds of ideas, all kinds of forces that come out of the culture around them. What if you could confidently shape them with a Christian worldview to navigate these forces, these ideas? Colson Educators Program is about just that.
There's a free course, Worldview Formation 101, available online. It's a self-paced course that will equip you to understand the ultimate goal of Christian education. Worldview Formation, developing lessons that incorporate the Christian worldview and creating a culture at the school where our students' faith can grow and be activated. Sign up for the Worldview Formation course today at colsoneducators.org. That's colsoneducators.org.
