Who really opposes diversity in schooling?

A recent New York Times article examined the growth of a charter school movement pioneered by Hillsdale College, one of America’s leading conservative institutions of higher education. The main thrust of the article is to worry that “the Hillsdale schools could be something of a publicly funded off-ramp for conservative parents who think their local schools misinterpret history and push a socially progressive agenda on issues from race and diversity to sexuality and gender.”

However, when placed within the larger context of developments in education in America, the Hillsdale classical school initiative is just one piece of a much broader movement toward diversity and pluralism in the educational options available for parents. A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 (Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue) found that state governments must treat all private schools equally, whether those schools are religious or not. Another case currently before the court (Carson v. Makin) will revisit the scope of the earlier decision and whether states have the practical ability to discriminate against religious schools “solely because they are religious.”

The Hillsdale charter schools are not religious or “sectarian” schools, but they do seek to inculcate a form of education that is increasingly at odds with the prevailing secular and progressive ideology of government schools. The idea that parents ought to have the ability to choose a form of schooling that deviates from secularist ideology is enough to earn mainstream attention and mainstream critique from the country’s most elite journalism outlet.

One silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic is that families have become increasingly aware of the power that government schooling has over the lives of children. Disputes about remote learning, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and curricula have awoken many parents to the already existing and emerging possibilities beyond the local government school as a default option. Questions about how U.S. history is taught, as well as important social and cultural issues, most notably race and sexuality, have galvanized parents into action. In some cases, this means engaging school boards and administration. In others, this means opting out of government schools, whether for other publicly funded alternatives like charters, private and parochial schools, or homeschooling and co-ops.

Much research has documented how the pandemic and the choices by government school officials and politicians drove many families to find alternatives to government-run public schools. As one study puts it, “The COVID-19 pandemic drastically disrupted the functioning of U.S. public schools, potentially changing the relative appeal of alternatives such as homeschooling and private schools.”

In a speech in 2020 at Hillsdale College, then–Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos articulated a principled vision for diversity in educational choice inspired by the Dutch neo-Calvinist theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper. Families, argued DeVos, are the fundamental unit of society, and parents have the right and the duty to educate their children according to their most fundamental convictions. The Dutch school-funding model pioneered by Kuyper provides an example of how government policy can properly recognize and affirm this basic feature of a free and flourishing society. “If we get the family and its freedom right,” said DeVos, “everything else that’s wrong about our culture will right itself. Rebuild the family, restore its power, and we will reclaim everything right about America, and us.”

A decade ago, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called education reform “the civil rights issue of our time.” The intervening pandemic has exacerbated the need for true equity and educational freedom. While many elites want to inflict ideological uniformity on American citizens through the monopoly of government schools, the path forward for a truly vibrant, diverse, and plural society is to embrace educational reform and expand school choice.

The not-so-subtle message implicit in critiques of educational reform is that departure from secular, progressive orthodoxy can only be due to bad faith attempts to privilege prejudice. If this kind of analysis results from the critical thinking taught in mainstream institutions, then it’s no wonder that many Americans are increasingly alienated, angered, and motivated to seek alternatives. Institutional diversity in parental choice is deeply American and should be celebrated and empowered rather than suppressed by ideological uniformity. We can be grateful that today, despite powerful efforts to the contrary, the larger trend in education is toward freedom.