School Choice

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

A recent Court of Appeals decision could cause some interesting reactions in the debate over school choice; perhaps some confusion, as well. Jacob Gershman in the August 31 edition of The Wall Street Journal writes:
“The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims by a group of Arkansas parents that they had a right to transfer their kids out of a struggling school district in northeast Arkansas to neighboring districts where they thought the children could be better educated. School officials rejected the transfer applications because they said the children’s assigned district, which is predominantly African-American, is still subject to a desegregation order from more than 40 years ago.
“The parents, who are white, sued for violations of due process and equal protection, claiming they had a constitutional right to move their kids. A lower court last year dismissed the parents’ complaint.”
In most cases, the call for school choice comes from conservatives and Christian parents who favor charter schools, tax credits, and school vouchers to achieve that end. Their argument is that parents should have the right to select schools that will best serve their children, and that the public school monopoly needs to be broken. Will conservatives take the same position on this Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision? If they do, there are ramifications.
In Gershman’s words, “Courts have said parents can’t be denied the right to choose to enroll their children in private schools. But those rulings don’t apply to parents seeking to move their kids within the public system, the appeals court said. The opinion, written by Judge Lavenski R. Smith, said there was no precedent that supported the position that ‘a parent’s ability to choose where his or her child is educated within the public school system is a fundamental right or liberty’.”
The plaintiffs’ children in this decision, Gershman continues, “are enrolled in the Blytheville School District in Blytheville, Ark., an impoverished small city in northeast Arkansas. The state has classified the district’s high school and middle school as ‘academic distressed’ based on student performance on standardized tests, and the parents sought to move their kids to two nearby, wealthier districts that they said were ‘better suited to satisfy [the] children’s educational needs’.”
Blytheville officials said it was still subject to a 1971 federal mandate requiring racial balance to remedy past discrimination, and that, as a policy, no transfers were allowed into or out of the district, regardless of the applicant’s race.
My guess is that there will be large numbers of white parents sympathetic to the plight of the white families in Blytheville looking to remove their children from dysfunctional schools with large minority populations; but also that those same parents would protest the transfer of large numbers of minority children into their own children’s schools. Does that make them hypocrites? Does logic require that those who support the white parents in this case in Blytheville also support demands by black parents to bus their children into schools in white neighborhoods? If not, why not?
We welcome our readers’ responses. Perhaps someone can find a way to draw the necessary distinctions in these cases.
One thing that must be said in advance, however, is that it is too simple to ascribe racist motives to parents who object to the busing of minority children into their children’s schools. I always point to the large numbers of white parents who pay the high tuition costs required to send their children to New York City Catholic high schools such as Fordham Prep and Archbishop Molloy. Those schools have large numbers of minority students.
This makes clear that most white parents do not object to their children attending integrated schools, as long as those schools maintain discipline and high academic standards. I do not have the staff to conduct a poll to prove my point, but I am confident that the same parents who pay the tuition to send their children to the integrated Catholic high schools in New York City would also protest minority students being bused into a local public school, if their children were enrolled there. Standards and a quality education are what matter, not race.
On another topic: the recent stories in the press about a Roman Catholic priest who is a West Virginia public school teacher. The priest, Fr. George Nedeff, has asked school officials to permit him to wear his religious habit in the classroom. Nedeff, a member of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, was recently hired as a substitute teacher in Wood County. The 75-year-old priest wears a gray, ankle-length habit, as well as a crucifix and a rosary.
Wood County Superintendent John Flint told reporters that he “respects” Fr. Nedeff’s request, but that school officials have not yet made a decision. “We know him and he is very sincere and very heartfelt, but we have to do our due diligence,” Flint said.
My first reaction was that it was asking too much of public school authorities to expect them to permit a priest in full habit to teach in a public school classroom. I have found it objectionable in the past when I hear stories about public school authorities applying pressure on teachers who wear crosses or religious medals. Diversity means diversity; Catholics are included in the multicultural mix. But, as George Orwell once wrote, civilization is “about drawing lines.” A full cassock in a public school might cross the line.
But should it? Perhaps this is a case where I have been browbeaten by the liberal elites. The law does not help all that much. West Virginia Department of Education spokeswoman Kristin Anderson told reporters that state law doesn’t specifically prohibit or allow the wearing of religious garments in the classroom. And that federal law provides “conflicting guidance.”
That means we are left to ponder the matter and to voice our opinions in the public square about how to deal with the question. For decades, the left in this country has led the fight to permit Jews and Muslims to wear their distinctive headgear while serving as government employees. The liberal establishment in the media and the academy would be up in arms if a Muslim woman were denied the right to wear a burqa while teaching in a public school. Liberals led the campaign to permit Jewish men to wear a yarmulke in the U.S. military.
Is a priest in full habit all that different? My grandchildren attend public schools in Connecticut. I don’t know if it would sit easy with me if I heard they were going to be taught by a Shiite mullah in full clerical garb. Where is the intelligent middle ground?
I’ll keep my eyes open for newspaper accounts of how this situation in West Virginia gets resolved. But I may miss the story when it appears. Perhaps our readers would be so kind as to send any information they come across about the eventual decision to First Teachers.

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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.