Los Angeles County schools recently decided to allow Planned Parenthood unfettered access to its students. Suffice it to say, this officially ends the debate over whether public schools are value-neutral.
Liberal pundits have used the myth of the value-neutral public school as fodder against school choice for the past decade. Broadly, they argue that we should support public schools owned and operated by government because they inculcate a shared set of values in students. Yet, parents, researchers, and reformers alike are now making the point, well taken after LA County’s recent decision, that the “values” taught by public schools are almost exclusively those of the liberal Left, not mores that necessarily further our democracy.
This new reality in our public schools bolsters the argument that we must recognize the value of educational pluralism, a school system structured to inculcate many different sets of values and then allow parents to choose. One group of schools has had such success that other schools are drawing upon its set of values, according to a new report by Kathleen Porter-Magee, superintendent of Partnership Schools.
Porter-Magee argues that the tradition and performance of Catholic schools in urban areas are informing how school leaders across sectors approach reform.
“Catholic schools have a clearly articulated mission and purpose, something that is increasingly being tied to long-term outcomes,” she said in a phone interview. “They also work to get all of the adults involved in a child’s life pulling in the same direction.”
Her report displays that charter school networks, such as the New York-based Success Academies, adopt these features of Catholic schools, as well as their focus on discipline and school safety.
Though most studies evaluating school performance focus on short-term outcomes such as test scores, the narrative should shift to consider what truly influences long-term outcomes. According to Porter-Magee, these factors are the shared values articulated through school culture, not a school pretending to be value-neutral.
Indeed, Porter-Magee writes that “the ability to foster a positive culture may well be one reason that school choice is so important. … If culture and values are important, it is equally important to understand and be transparent about the explicit and implicit values that drive different schools.”
In a world in which public schools are increasingly asserting a normative agenda, just as any private school does, empowering parents to choose among these value structures is crucial.
The opposite of pluralism is totalitarianism. The battle over school choice is a fight over the value system to which we want our children exposed. Parents, not the state, should make that determination.
Kate Hardiman is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She taught high school in Chicago for two years while earning her M.Ed. and is now a J.D. candidate at Georgetown University Law Center.
