Vernard Gant, D.Min., is the director of Urban School Services for ACSI. He comes to ACSI from the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Birmingham, Alabama. After studying the problem for years, Dr. Gant believes and espouses that the most effective way to help reverse the effects of the multigenerational breakdown of urban families is the Christ-centered school.
This article was taken from “The Means of an Education” previously published in ACSI‘s "The Meantime," vol. 2, no. 1, 2002.
On June 27, 2002, the Supreme Court ruled, “The constitutionality of a neutral educational aid program simply does not turn on whether and why, in a particular area, at a particular time, most private schools are run by religious organizations, or most recipients choose to use the aid at a religious school” (Zelman, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Ohio, et al. v. Simmons-Harris et al. U.S. case no. 00-1751 [2002]). This ruling opens the door for economically and socially disadvantaged children to attend Christian schools, which can effectively educate them and equip them with what they need to function successfully in society.
The tendency to place institutions on par with or above people is not a modern phenomenon. Perhaps there is a natural proneness to make people subservient to the very institutions that exist to serve them. We can certainly see this occurrence in the institution of the Sabbath day during the life of Jesus. In one incident, the Bible records, “And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath’—that they might accuse Him. Then He said to them, ‘What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep?’ (Matthew 12:10–12).
It was in this context that Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The parallels are uncanny. The keepers of the Sabbath institution reversed the God-ordained order of things. To them the Sabbath system did not exist for the people; rather, the people existed for the system. Moreover, they exercised a double standard. The system took precedence over the man with the broken condition, yet it did not take precedence over the welfare of their own animals. In much the same vein, this is how the discussion progresses, or regresses, in reference to economically disadvantaged children and public school systems.
The parents and grandparents of urban children want what any loving parent wants for their children. They know the role a quality education plays in a child’s future, but they lack the financial means to secure such an education and must accept what is offered in their assigned schools. These parents have no choice.
The ultimate issue is not the merits of private education over public education. Instead, the point is that when parents are empowered to choose the schools they feel best meet the needs of their children, the children have a better chance at succeeding. Practically all families of means realize this fact and exercise the freedom to place their children in the kind of learning environment that is best suited for them, be it a public, private, or homeschool. Unfortunately, many poor families are limited to the neighborhood school, whatever its academic track record. To exercise school choice, these families must rely on being randomly chosen for a privately financed voucher program or on being recipients of the benevolence of strangers.
Those who oppose school choice like to make the distinction between public and private education as though these are in opposition to one another. But when applied to children, the terms are misnomers. First, there is no such thing as a public child. In 1925, the Supreme Court, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, established this fact from the standpoint of the Constitution: “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations” (268 U.S. 510, 535). Moreover, in practical terms there is no such thing as a private education. All education is designed to equip people to function in the public arenas of life.
Now as a result of the Court ruling of June 27, a door of opportunity is opening for the urban poor. Perhaps Justice Thomas summarized it best in his concurring opinion: “While the romanticized ideal of universal public education resonates with the cognoscenti who oppose vouchers, poor urban families just want the best education for their children, who will certainly need it to function in our high-tech and advanced society.…The failure to provide education to poor urban children perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty, dependence, criminality, and alienation that continues for the remainder of their lives….If society cannot end racial and social discrimination, at least it can arm minorities with the education to defend themselves from some of discrimination’s effects” (Zelman, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Ohio, et al. v. Simmons-Harris et al. U.S. case no. 00-1751 [2002], italics mine).
All indications are that low-income minority children benefit greatly from school choice in general and Christian schooling in particular. Independent studies by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (Greene 2000) and the Program on Education Policy and Governance of Harvard University indicate that African American students who were the recipients of privately funded vouchers to attend the schools of their choice showed considerable academic gains over their public school counterparts who applied for but did not receive vouchers.
The findings were so compelling that one group of researchers concluded: “If the trend line observed over the first two years continues in subsequent years, the black-white test gap could be eliminated in subsequent years of education for black students who use a voucher to switch from public to private school” (Howell et al. 2000). Moreover, according to a follow-up by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, low-income children who attend private schools are nearly four times more likely to complete college than their public school peers (Department of Education 2002). In addition, the vast majority of children in private schools attend religious or faith-based schools. This tendency is especially true for low-income families because the normal cost of attending a Christian school is considerably less than attending other private schools. According to the NCES, 85 percent of private school students attend faith-based schools. These schools are demonstrating and research shows that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the children. The same children who have basically been written off as uneducable, undereducable, learning challenged, and learning disabled in public schools are achieving and excelling academically in private schools. They are behaving, they are going to college, they are graduating, and they are becoming productive citizens.
Frederick Douglass rightly noted that the greatest benefit that can be bestowed on a disadvantaged people is to provide them with the means of an education. And there is no education like a Christian education. For with a Christian education, we educate children not only for life but also for eternity.
Reference List:
Greene, Jay P. 2000. The effect of school choice: An evaluation of the Charlotte Children’s Scholarship Fund program. Civic Report. No. 12. New York: The Manhattan Institute (August).
Howell, William G., Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson, and David E. Campbell. 2000, August. Test-score effects of school vouchers in Dayton, Ohio, New York City, and Washington, D.C.: Evidence from randomized field trials. Retrieved July 23, 2002, from The Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 2002. The condition of education 2002. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
The Means of an Education 6.2