According to the Southern Education Foundation, white students are overrepresented in private schools compared to the overall school-age population. This is not surprising. Given that private schools charge tuition, one would think students from wealthier families are more likely to attend. White families have a higher median income than the nationwide average (although Asian-Americans have the highest), while African-Americans have the lowest.
In Mississippi, for example, white students are roughly half of the school-aged population, but 87 percent of private school students there are white. That 36-point gap is the largest in the nation. Nationwide, the gap averages 15 percentage points.
But a handful of states show that it doesn’t have to be that way.
For example, take a look at Wisconsin, where whites are actually 3 percent underrepresented in private schools. It’s the only midwestern state where whites are not overrepresented. It helps that in Milwaukee, the largest public school district in the state, the Parental Choice Program allows families below a certain income line to send their child to private school. In 2012, the year from which the Southern Education Foundation used data, more than 23,000 students participated in the program, and the number has only risen since then.
Just because a family can’t afford private school doesn’t mean its members shouldn’t be able to attend. The solution, of course, is school choice. Government funding of education should be tied to the student and follow her wherever he chooses to attend. The federal government already does this with student aid at the collegiate level, but for some reason, it’s controversial at the K-12 level.
There are several ways government could fund this. Eligible families could be allowed to take a large portion of their existing public school funding and apply it toward private school tuition and school-related fees. This is how the Milwaukee program is funded.
Alternatively, the government could give a tax credit to businesses or individuals who donate to nonprofit groups that distribute private school scholarships. Florida has such a program, with about 70,000 participants. Thanks in part to that, Florida has the smallest portion of white over-representation in private schools of any state in the South.
Either method could focus on low-income families by cutting off eligibility at a certain income line.
Part of the private school choice issue debates whether private schools should be allowed to be selective in their admissions. “The public-school system is built on the bedrock notion that we want each child to have a chance for a good education,” Steve Suitts, who wrote the Southern Education Foundation study, told the Washington Post. “And if private schools do not wish to advance that national purpose, then they ought not receive public funding.” Suitts, however, couldn’t name an instance when a private school rejected a qualified minority student.
Greg Forster, a senior fellow at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, thinks requiring private schools to accept all applicants if they’re in a school choice program would do more harm than good. “It prevents schools from matching the right student to the right school. Just as parents should have the right to say to schools, ‘You’re not the right fit for my child, I’m going to find another school,’ schools should also have the right to say to parents, ‘We’re not the right fit for your child.'”
We would not, for example, expect Harvard University to admit someone with a 2.0 grade point average and below average scores on the ACT or SAT.
Yes, private schools are too segregated, but it’s largely due to tuition, not discrimination. School choice programs help reduce that segregation. If the programs are not designed carefully, though, they might do more harm than good.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
