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Op-Ed: Christian schools outperform
public schools during COVID-19, according to parent survey
[The Center Square] Todd Graves |
RealClearWire
Among last year’s other lessons, none may
be more important than this: Our taxpayer-funded education establishment
cares more about adults than children.
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 Consider the evidence: public school union bosses pressured
officials to close schools and keep them shuttered beyond what medical
authorities recommended. In spite of the obvious harm to children of school
closures, unions throughout the country lobbed threats and issued demands. In
Chicago, the union went so far as to sue the mayor to keep schools closed; in
San Francisco, the city had to sue its school board.
A public education system that failed to do right by our children has kept union
bosses empowered and politicians cowed. Thankfully, our country offers an
alternative – one that proved its mettle this past year. In a recent survey of
public school and Christian school parents, the Herzog Foundation found that
parents of children who attended a Christian school were vastly more satisfied
with their school experience.
Christian parents reported their schools were open even as
nearby public options closed. While only 8 percent of public school parents
could report that their schools never closed, a quarter of Christian school
parents did.
The survey found that during the pandemic, Christian school parents found it
easier to manage their child’s time, communicate with teachers, manage their
child’s assignments, and were better able to keep up their child’s morale than
the parents of children in public schools. As a result, while just over half of
public school parents reported being satisfied with their child’s education in
2020, fully 80 percent of Christian school parents were.
As the country gears up for another possible series of lockdowns in response to
the delta variant, it is worthwhile for parents on the fence about Christian
education to give it a second look. The data is unmistakable: In a panicked,
trying year, Christian school parents and their children fared far better than
their public school counterparts.
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The data offers us hope on several fronts. Parents
across the country are expressing growing anxiety about the teaching
of “critical race theory” in classrooms. In this survey, 70 percent
of all parents do not believe their school should teach that “white
people are inherently privileged and Black people and others are
oppressed.”
Moreover, 80 percent of all parents do not think
that their school should teach that achieving racial justice
requires discriminating against white people. In other words, while
America’s parents may disagree on a great deal, they are united in
the belief that many of the central tenets of critical race theory
should not be in the classroom, whether that classroom is funded
privately or publicly.
These findings are powerful for those who oversee
Christian schools and for those parents making tough decisions about
their children’s education. In public schools, too many parents see
a system that seems more eager to cater to adults than children.
This past year, those tendencies were set on overdrive, as public
school unions fought both science and reason to keep schools closed.
In the face of that, parents ought to consider a broader set of
options, including Christian schools whose parents report more
satisfaction and more attention to students than their public
counterparts.
Todd Graves is an attorney and is chairman of the
Herzog Foundation.
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