Public Schools Serve the Lowest Common Denomination

Keri D. Ingraham adroitly details how public schools are less accessible to the public than privately owned shopping malls (“‘Public’ Schools That Aren’t Public,” op-ed, Aug. 9). She’s right. No one has been arrested for shopping at a mall that is a district or two away.

But there is another way that public schools aren’t truly open to all. They often can’t meet the needs of religious students, particularly religious minorities. Even within attendance boundaries, public schools aren’t designed to serve every child, but rather the lowest common denominator—or lowest common denomination.

Initially, U.S. public schools were de facto nondenominational Protestant. After an influx of Catholic immigration in the late 1800s, followed by other religious minorities, public schools secularized. Now, students are expected to leave their faith at the schoolhouse door, rendering religion as something that is for nights and weekends, not something that informs every part of a child’s life, including his or her formal education.

What of families who want their children to see—as Newton, Pascal and Kepler did—the hand of God in the orderliness of mathematics and the natural sciences? Or Orthodox Jews, who keep a different calendar and need significant time daily to study the great corpus of the Jewish tradition? Or traditional religious families of all stripes who don’t want their children indoctrinated in the secular progressivist values so prevalent in public schools today? Public schools evidently aren’t designed for them.

The only system that truly serves all students is one that allows families to choose schools that align with their values: universal school choice.

Jason Bedrick

Research fellow, Heritage Foundation

Phoenix