Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rust and president of NC Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. Thank you for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. I'm Mitch Prosser, Vice President, NC Family, joined by our Director of Research and Education, Adama Manfra.
Welcome to the sixth episode of the Truths We Hold. In honor of America's 250th anniversary and NC Family's 35th anniversary this year, we're taking a deeper look at the foundational values that have shaped our country and continue to shape the work we do right here at NC Family. Today, we're going to talk about education at DAMO and take a deeper look into what education means, not just for our organization, but for families across the state of North Carolina. Of course, this is in the broader context of the inalienable right found in the Declaration of Independence Life.
So, how do we connect life to education? Yeah, so as we've been going along, we started with three enumerated rights from the Declaration and we started with life. And so looking at life, we then acknowledge that the context in which life comes to be is in the context of a family. And so then we looked at marriage, where the family begins, and then parenting, where life is then brought into being and then raised by the parents. And then one of the key parts of parenting is education.
Now helpful to understand that when we talk about education today in this episode, and as often we would talk about education and policy, we can mean a few different levels of things.
So the default assumption is when we say education, we mean public school, private school, charter school, formal sort of intellectual education or even academic education. But really education means much more than that. It means all of human formation, formation in the faith, which in some private schools certainly is a part of that. But if your kids are doing some other form of education, it may not be, but they're still being educated in that by the parents.
So again, education is fundamentally and primarily the role and responsibility of the parents, though they will inevitably use some form of Supplement, whether that's a different school or even in homeschool, they use some kind of curriculum. I assume very few parents out there are homeschooling from their own homemade curriculum and starting from school.
Well, you pointed out what appears to be a major philosophical divide today, and we talked about this a little bit on the last episode of The Truths We Hold in regard to who should parent children, what that looks like, whether the state should be involved, to what extent the state should be involved. And the same is true here on this aspect of the life issue in regard to education. The question then becomes: who should be the primary educator? I love something you said as we've talked through this issue and as we've discussed it in our office. Parents are first and naturally responsible for the education of their children.
I think that expresses this in a way that is fundamental, but also allows for the launching, as you said, of some of the more ancillary components of education. That's a great point. And I think we talked about it in the last episode that when parents are seen as the caregivers in a more More technocratic view of things, a temptation could be to see education as really the state has a primary expertise in that. We're the experts, you're just parents. Yeah, and parents, you're going to provide for the care of their food and housing and clothes, but don't worry, we've got the education covered.
And even if parents send their kids to public school and make that choice for their child, they are still the ones responsible for that education. And they are allowing the state school system to provide the academic part of that. But they should not see themselves as being sort of off the hook or removed from or second class in or in any other way separated from the education of their child. Even the academic education is still primarily on them. It's just that some school teacher is providing the instructional period, if you will.
Absolutely.
So our organization, NC Family, has long and strongly supported education, freedom, and opportunity through a myriad of different avenues, including Opportunity Scholarship Fund, which is fully funded here in the state of North Carolina. has many people applying for that and receiving those funds in order to provide the best educational options and opportunity for those children and parents are doing a great job with that. Let's walk through some of these different styles or models of education or options for education. Of course, a majority of North Carolinians are going to choose public school as the primary education option.
So what does that look like and what should the relationship between the parent, the child, and the education system look like from the standpoint of public education? Sure.
So I think we could even back up one step before we look at the different sort of models and remember that this is primarily the parent's choice. Yes. And so we often hear school choice as if it's, again, this thing being created by the state and bestowed upon. We're affording you this. Yes.
Yeah. Aren't we fortunate that our state created school choice? But no, it is always the choice of the parent. And so they are, if and when a parent sends their child to public school, that is their choice of the instructors in these Classes for their children for this period of time, but they will remain the ones making that choice over and over again for the next semester and the next year and the next subject, whereas that teacher will come and go in most cases.
So, in North Carolina, we are very fortunate and blessed and lucky to have policies and options that we do.
So, the traditional public school is sort of the default. It's still, depending on where you break that down and if charter schools you kind of include in that, well, over 70, 80% of students are still going to those schools. And that's your sort of standard. Typically, it's going to be in where you live. You're not doing a cross-registration, though.
There are options for that as well, and those may be expanding soon, depending on which way some policies go. But that's sort of your default public school. Then, the next step could be what we were just talking about: that you can cross-register sometimes inside the district or even across a different district. There are different complications to that, and it's not super popular yet. And there are some policies in the work that may or may not pass.
But the more natural next step is a charter school.
So, charter schools are often misunderstood. They're public schools. They're part of DPI, the State Department of. Public instruction, and they're free because they're state schools, but they're not your zoned school. And typically, they have some kind of, you might say, charism or focus or identity that's unique.
It might be a little more classical, it might be a little more STEM, it might serve a particular sub-community, but it's that kind of unique school. It has a separate governing organization, it's not under the local school district, it is a separate local education agency that runs that, but it is still by the state.
So, you can apply for those, and often there's a waiting list or a lottery to get into those schools. Then, the sort of more typical what we think of is the private schools. And so, these can range widely from focused religious schools, parochial schools, church-connected schools. They can be sub-population. Again, they can focus on special needs or special focuses.
And they're all over the state, tons and tons of these. And in North Carolina, the Opportunity Scholarship Program that you mentioned briefly provides funding for students, not for the school, but for the students, and really for the parents to send their children to those schools and provide some of, if not all, of, the tuition depending on. income of the family and the cost of the tuition.
So let's make a clear divided distinction right here, right now on the difference between state dollars going to educational resources. It's often misconstrued or confused intentionally or not that tax dollars are going to private schools through the Opportunity Scholarship Fund. Public dollars are funding public schools and charter schools, but they are not funding private parochial Christian church-based schools. Anything other than public and charter schools, tax dollars, public funds are not funding those. Is that correct?
So it depends on how you look at that.
So again, going back to the idea of a policy that recognizes the government engaging with the family rather than the government sort of isolating the child as really a ward of the state that's being babysat by the family. Our Opportunity Scholarship Program does that, I think, quite well. And one of the ways it does that as sort of an indication that it's doing that well is that typically when you apply for the Opportunity Scholarship Program, if you have multiple children applying for it, they will all get the scholarship. Lotteries separately. And so that's a good indication, I think, to the fact that this program is aimed at my family and not just this child.
Then those funds are going to me primarily, but schools do have to register with the state to qualify for these funds. And then the funds actually do go directly to the school. But it's because of the school you chose. Because I chose the school and because my children would go there. If they don't enroll there, then we don't get it.
I don't apply for this, then they just send me the money and then I go do what I want with my kids. I have to then enroll my children in a school that is on the list, and then the money does go to that. But the money is funding the tuition for my child. It's just paying directly to the school for logistic and bureaucratic reasons.
So, in a sense, the money is going to a religious school, which, quite frankly, I don't necessarily oppose even more directly, but that is the sort of gateway and the pathway in the process. And then, additionally, because it's following the child to that school, and because it's cut off at a certain threshold, depending on what tier you are and family income and number of people in the family, we're actually getting a better value. For our money, than if I were to send my kids to public school. We spend almost twice, if not three times as much per student at a public school than the max amount that a family can get for their child to go to a private school.
So it's actually a better deal for our state taxpayers anyway to help support these private schools than it is to fund public schools.
So another option, another opportunity or a choice in this education freedom aspect is homeschooling.
Some parents may choose to keep their children in the home and educate them that way. The state of North Carolina allows that. What does that look like for families as they navigate that territory? North Carolina is actually a great state for homeschooling freedom. There are some stipulations that you do have to register and tell the state that hey, my kids home.
That goes through the Department of Non-Public Education.
So it's actually under the Department of Administration rather than the Department of Education here. And then you're largely free to select your own curriculum. You do have to conduct some testing, like you do have to make it academic, but you don't have to report the success or the grades to the state. You don't owe them that. There is no opportunity scholarship program.
Homeschooling. Correct. Not getting any dollars if you keep your kids home to educate them. Most homeschool families would agree that's a good thing. They don't want state dollars or anything like that.
They're often concerned about some of the strings that could be attached to that in regard to testing and other features.
So as we look back to our last episode and we talked about the benefits of good parenting helping children grow into flourishing adults, it's probably abundantly clear why education so that we don't have undereducated children who will grow into adults and not be able to be set up for success. But I think there's a deeper question that can be answered on why education. Walk our listeners through why it's important for parents to be integrally and first and primarily responsible for their child's education. Yeah, so again, as we said up at the beginning of the episode, we think of education as sort of a broader term of really formation and leading out of, leading out of ignorance and leading into formation. But all of this helps your child grow into the adult that we want them to be in the faith, in the church, in the community.
Without Any of these things, then when they grow up, they won't be fully able to appreciate the liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we are the second and third enumerated rights, which we'll get into more in later episodes. But liberty or freedom is often thought of as freedom from, like, you can't stop me from doing X. Like, I have the right to do this thing, and I'm free from you stopping me. But we really want to think about freedom as freedom for.
So, we want our children to grow up and be capable of really exercising that liberty for the good and the liberty for their faith, and to exercise religious freedom and moral freedom and adulthood and flourishing. And then, by that, and by educating and understanding that our true happiness is found in only one place, and that's God. That since that is their true happiness, then and only then can they really pursue happiness because without the education to know that that's where happiness lies, they'll run into chasing it in other places, which will be our last episode, some places where you can do that wrong.
So, it sounds to me like it's more than just a right, it's more than just a responsibility. Ultimately, it's a calling, it is a calling upon a parent or parent. Lives to make sure that their child is educated the best way possible.
So let's work through that a little bit more outside of the traditional classroom or the traditional homeschool environment. There's a lot of other things that our organization, primarily through your roles and responsibilities here inside of NC Family, Focus on. Let's talk a little bit more about tech usage and what that looks like in regard to the entire education process for a child, not just inside the classroom. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And I think you could even bring in other things like sex education and other things where.
Parents not only provide and inform and educate, but also protect. And so the data is just all over the place, and it's getting a lot of traction on the dangers of social media and smartphones and devices for kids, particularly at young ages. Not long ago, just a few months ago, Meta and YouTube got hit by some significant court cases that ruled that those were addictive and known to be addictive and dangerous to youth and minors. But also in the classroom, data is starting to get traction, particularly the work of Dr. Horvath, an episode on our podcast, about the dangers, not dangers maybe, but the downsides and the ineffectiveness, in fact, counter-effectiveness of ed tech.
So tech in the classrooms. We all wanted to think that having the sort of unique experience that each kid can have with a program because they can tell, oh, this student needs custom help because this is the kind of problem they're having, that educational devices, whether it's Chromebooks, laptops, iPads, or other kinds of tablets in the classroom, those would be different and better and good. though the smartphones are bad at home and the data just doesn't back that up. It's becoming more and more abundantly clear that there's enough correlation that causation cannot be entirely separate, that schools and districts where there's larger adoption of in-class tech and that's still isolated tech, even like a laptop that cannot get on the internet, even a tablet that can't get on anything other than in-class devices, is still producing lower academic performance, lower critical thinking, worse social interaction, worse behavior in the classroom. And that when schools pull that out, there's a significant increase in all of those areas.
In fact, one network of schools here, the Thales Academies, recently pulled their tech out of their middle school classrooms and within the first semester saw increases in all these areas, so much so that either in the second semester or the next year, they're pulling them out of the high schools as well. Wow, fascinating. And I had a chance to talk to one of their administrators about how they just saw that this great promise and after many years of using that in the classroom, all the performance was going in the wrong direction.
So they took it upon themselves to try this out, pull it out, and the results were tremendous. And that's in addition to what North Carolina thankfully passed this last year, cutting back on requiring some kind of policy restricting or limiting phones and social media type devices in the school. But we want to be clear that that's distinct from EdTech, which is intentional technology in the classroom for the purpose of instruction and learning. But even that, we're seeing is academically counterproductive.
So, once more for entertainment, we have a law now, schools are starting to adopt these policies internally that say it may be best for us to allow children to use a piece of paper and a pen again. And so, for all of you parents out there who are like, wait a second, my school seems to be regressing, it's definitely going to help your child in the long run. I love the social interactivity piece of that because I think that's so crucial and important for the development of the child. We've talked a little bit about sexual education. Tell those who may not be aware of what comprehensive sex ed is and what that looks like for children and their parents.
Yeah, so the word comprehensive as an adjective is not a bad word. And if you said comprehensive sexual education, I could get behind that as just a descriptor, but in that context, we would want to talk about identity, creation, Genesis one and two type stuff, what it means to be a man and a woman, what that means for getting married someday and having kids and growing and flourishing and thriving in the body that God gave you.
However, unfortunately, the term comprehensive sex ed is specifically tied to a different kind of thing, which is often the curriculum is actually developed by Planned Parenthood, but even when it's not, it is much more a, you're going to have sex, you must have contraception, you're going to be promiscuous, you're going to live this life, and by the way, gender is malleable and your sex doesn't mean anything and your anatomy is up for discussion. All of these things get packed into almost universally, if you hear the term comprehensive sex ed, it's that kind of course. And fortunately, our state and many states do have this because it's constitutionally protected by Supreme Court precedent, that you can opt out of those things. And in fact, in North Carolina, you have to opt in, which is even better. But these and other things, including, and this is why I tied it to EdTech, we would like to see opt-outs for tech as well.
That is not a policy yet, but that would be a good policy going forward. And all of these things go back to Supreme Court precedent, constitutional precedent, legal precedent that affirm, going back to our last episode, parents first, that parents are the primary formator, educator, caregiver for their children. And so parents are the ones choosing to allow teachers in public schools, private schools, or whatever to be the instructors for their students, but they retain. primacy and they retain authority and they retain their parenting rights and so they get to choose hey but not that it's not the public school to say like these are our kids and we'll educate them and then you feed them when we send them home sounds like a good place to start landing the plane on the parental bill of rights already passed and the parental medical bill of rights what should we know about those things sure so the parents bill of rights passed in 2023 a huge tremendous success in this area specifically about schools It's a little less focused on education in the sense that it's more focused on health records in schools and gender transitioning students socially in schools and keeping that from parents. It's much more about transparency to parents rather than education, but it does include opt-outs and requirements for informing parents on educational curriculum and resources and giving parents access to that information so that they can be more informed, more integrated, more active, and have more priority and authority in making choices in an educated way about the education of their children.
The Parents Medical Bill of Rights extends that into more health records and more health choices and we'll definitely get in more of that weather health and sexuality episode to follow and I look forward to that. Unfortunately that one has not yet passed but we'll talk about why it should in that episode. That's good. I love what we've talked through and as we've worked through what this is going to look like, not just for these episodes, but for our organization and the things that we support and encourage and get behind to advocate for. One of the things that we've talked about is all of this should happen according to the dictates of a person's conscience.
And so, again, I mean, if we can overstate the obvious, I don't think we can in this situation. Parents are integrally involved or should be integrally involved in the education of their children according to the dictates of that parent's conscience.
So, whether a person has a faith background or not, that parent should be involved and, as you said, primary in their child's education.
Well, that rounds out a great episode on Education. We want to thank you for watching this episode of the Truths We Hold as we celebrate 250 years of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and of course our 35th anniversary here at NC Family. Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Truths We Hold. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review.
To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
