While it has not garnered the attention that the economy, immigration and abortion have generated, school choice — an important issue for many Catholic families concerned about the state of their local public schools — serves as another clear separator in this year’s presidential election.

Former president Donald Trump is for it and has a governing record to back it up. Vice President Kamala Harris opposes it and has for more than a decade. 

At an Oct. 10 campaign event in Milwaukee, for example, Trump championed his “universal school-choice policy,” saying he believes it’s the “civil-rights issue of our time.” The Republican Party’s platform also promotes school choice.

While Harris has said little about school choice during her truncated campaign, her party’s platform stands firmly against it.

“We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education,” the platform states.

In recent years, the school-choice movement — broadly construed as the effort to return education tax dollars to the families so they can choose the best education option for their children — has seen its popularity explode across demographic categories and geographic regions. Causes behind the surge vary, ranging from parental dismay at the poor academic achievement and sharply ideological content in public schools, to a desire for a more individualized education, to concerns surrounding unequal access to better performing private and charter schools. 

And while the Democratic Party’s close ties with the teachers’ unions is likely to prevent federal legislation on school choice to pass in the next Congress, experts believe that having an ally in the White House would make it easier for the movement to flourish. 

While declining to comment on an issue being raised during a political campaign, Chieko Noguchi, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) told the Register, “The Catholic Church teaches that parents are the first and primary teachers of their children and know the needs of their children best. In that regard, the Conference supports public policies that expand educational choice for families because we believe that will benefit education overall and better serve all children.”

Numerous state Catholic conferences have also signaled support for school-choice legislation. Following the passage of a 2022 school choice bill in Arizona, for instance, the bishops of the Arizona Catholic Conference issued a statement saying, “We strongly support a quality education for all children in Arizona and believe it is best to have good district schools, charter schools, private schools, and homeschool options.”

 

‘School-Choice Moment’

A June poll by RealClear Opinion Research found that white, Black, Hispanic and Asian voters all approve of school-choice legislation within the range of 69% and 76%. This includes a clear majority among voters who identify with either major political party in both red and blue states. In a highly polarized nation, the consensus forming around school choice makes the issue an anomaly.

At a recent conference called “Church and State: Reimagining Faith Communities’ Role in K-12 Education” at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., keynote speaker Nicole Stelle Garnett, a law professor at University of Notre Dame, relished the opportunities at hand for school-choice advocates.

“After more than three decades of incremental growth, the tide has turned in the battle for parental choice and education; we are in a school-choice moment,” she said in her address. “We are in the school-choice moment.”

In total, 32 states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) now offer programs that enable parents to use some portion of their tax funds for the educational avenues of their choice. Popular among these mechanisms to enhance choice are Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs), which are publicly funded savings accounts established for parents of K-12 students to use at their discretion, and school vouchers, in which funds typically used by school districts are allocated to families in the form of a voucher that can be used to pay for tuition at a private or religious school. In 2023, the National Catholic Educational Association found that 13.7% of Catholic-school students use school-choice programs to help pay tuition.

This November, voters in three states — Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska — will vote on ballot measures related to school-choice programs. 

 

White House Impact

In early 2023, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., introduced school-choice legislation called the Creating Hope and Opportunity for Individuals and Communities through Education (CHOICE) Act to expand school-choice programs for elementary and secondary school students. The bill would have authorized the Department of Education to award grants that allow the parent of a child with a disability to choose the best school for their child, in addition to other school-choice initiatives. 

But with a Democrat, President Joe Biden, currently occupying the White House, the bill was dead on arrival. 

According to Kathleen Porter-Magee, managing partner of Leadership Roundtable, a lay-led nonprofit that works in partnership with Church leaders, the dispute between factions on the political right on the appropriateness of federal education legislation notwithstanding — libertarians, for instance, don’t believe the federal government should be involved in education, period — the presence of an ally in the Oval Office can shape the national conversation surrounding the movement in a positive way. 

“If for no other reason, having a champion of school choice in the White House is helpful because of the president’s ability to make a call to action for parental choice,” she told the Register. “It can have a huge impact on policies that get passed at the state and local level.”

She also believes that having an opponent of school choice in the White House can also cause great harm to the movement. 

“Democrats in general, the Biden administration in particular, don’t support school-choice legislation,” she said. “Getting federal legislation is even an uphill battle with a Republican administration. But one definitely isn’t going to get signed into law with a Democrat in the White House.”

For Garnett, the contrast between the first Trump administration and the Biden administration on school choice is stark.

“Biden has made life very, very difficult for religious institutions, including schools,” she told the Register. “He opposes parental choice in education, opposes private school choice and charter schools. Both Biden and Harris do what the teachers’ unions tell them to. The prior Trump administration certainly supported school choice, including supporting a federal program that would be based on tax credits, which is pending in Congress.”

According to EdChoice, a nonprofit school-choice advocacy organization, only 39% of the families with children enrolled in public schools, which accounts for 80% of overall national enrollment, want their children in a public school. If given the choice, 36% of families would send their children to private schools, 9% to charter schools, and 8% would home school. Advancing the priorities of the school choice would help close this gap between preferences and outcomes. 

 

Why Should Catholics Care?

For Catholic parents in today’s public-school climate, which has seen content derived from critical race theory and other ideological sources increasingly dominate curriculum, the urgency of having choice for the schooling of their children has never been more urgent. And while both home schooling and Catholic school enrollment have seen an uptick following the COVID-19 pandemic, the costs involved are often too high for families, especially for larger ones. As a result, many Catholic families become “stuck” in schools that underperform academically and teach values, often in a compulsory way, that contradict the tenets of the faith.

“Our Church teaches, and we believe, that parents are the primary educators of their children,” Garnett told the Register. “Parents have the right and the duty to direct their upbringing. And that includes, most importantly, choosing schools where they will be formed. The government has a duty to provide the resources that enable them to attend.”

Porter-Magee cites a century-old U.S. Supreme Court decision, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, in which the court struck down an Oregon law that required all 8- to 16-year-olds to attend public school, as evidence that Catholics have always been leading the charge for school choice.

“One quote from the decision, that ‘a child is not a mere creature of the state,’ encapsulates why Catholic education and school choice is so important in our mission and ministry as Catholics. The ability to raise our children in our faith is fundamental and critical.”