Restoring Parents to Their Rightful Place in American Education

An Analysis of the Education Freedom Tax Credit --

A significant new chapter in American education policy is about to begin. Last year, Congress enacted the nation's first federal tax-credit program supporting educational choice. As implementation approaches, the Education Freedom Tax Credit provides an important opportunity to consider what good governance requires when government acts in a sphere where the rights and responsibilities of others precede the State. Indeed, the recently enacted Education Freedom Tax Credit provides an important occasion to examine education policy through the lens of First Principles.

While whether a particular policy expands school choice or improves educational outcomes is not irrelevant, the more fundamental question asks whether it respects the proper allocation of authority among the family, civil society, the States, and the federal government. Viewed from that First Principles perspective, the governing principle is straightforward. Parents, not government, hold responsibility, and corresponding right, to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children. Sound education policy ought, therefore, empower parents to fulfill that responsibility while respecting the constitutional limits on government power and preserving the independence of the institutions they choose. We must evaluate the Education Freedom Tax Credit against that standard.

For too long, the American debate over education began with the wrong question. We ask how government should operate schools when we should first ask, who holds the original authority and responsibility to direct the education and upbringing of a child?

Our constitutional tradition provides an answer. More than a century ago, the Supreme Court rejected Oregon's attempt effectively to require children to attend government schools. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Court emphatically declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State.” Government possesses legitimate authority to provide the opportunity for children to receive an education, but it does not possess authority to dictate the worldview through which they will understand truth, morality, human dignity, family, faith, and citizenship. That distinction matters profoundly today.

Education is never worldview-neutral. Every school teaches your child something about what is true, what is good, what it means to be human, and what kind of life is worthy of pursuit. Parents, therefore, cannot meaningfully exercise their responsibility for their children's upbringing if government assigns their children to schools that teach values fundamentally contrary to their deepest convictions. Indeed, at its core, educational freedom concerns freedom of conscience itself.

The new Education Freedom Tax Credit represents an important step in the right direction. Beginning in 2027, federal law allows an eligible taxpayer to receive a dollar-for-dollar federal income tax credit of up to $1,700 for a qualifying contribution to a Scholarship Granting Organization. These independent nonprofit organizations then award scholarships to eligible families for qualified elementary and secondary educational expenses. These expenses include tutoring, books, supplies, special-needs services, transportation, and other educational expenses associated with public, private, or religious schools.

The structure matters. Rather than creating another federal bureaucracy that decides where a child should attend school, the policy encourages private citizens to support scholarship organizations that put educational resources closer to families. Parents can then use scholarship assistance to pursue educational opportunities responsive to the needs of their children. In this respect, the policy better honors the proper order of authority. Government does not assume the parent's responsibility to direct a child's education. It removes a financial obstacle that too often prevents parents from meaningfully exercising that responsibility.

Unfortunately, families in every State, including Michigan, may not receive this opportunity. Congress made participation voluntary. A State must elect to participate and identify qualified Scholarship Granting Organizations before its residents can fully benefit from the program. While the IRS reports that more than half the states have already done so, the Michigan State Board of Education formally urged the State not to participate, mischaracterizing the program as a private-school voucher undermining public education. That mischaracterization conceals an important feature of the law. Scholarships can benefit children attending public schools as well as children attending private and religious schools. A public-school family, for example, may obtain assistance for tutoring or special-needs services without withdrawing its child from the public school.

More fundamentally, opposition framed around protecting a government school system begins with the wrong constitutional premise. The purpose of education policy ought not be to protect one institutional provider from competition. It ought to respect parents as those who hold the original responsibility and authority to direct the upbringing and education of their children. Public schools can and should prosper where parents choose them. Private and religious schools should succeed where parents choose them. Good governance respects those choices rather than using government power to privilege one educational institution over another.

Michigan should, therefore, participate. Doing so would not compel a single parent to leave a public school, require a family to choose a religious school, or prevent anyone from supporting Michigan's public-school system. Nor does the policy send a single penny of taxpayer money directly from the government to a private or religious school. Instead, private citizens voluntarily contribute to independent Scholarship Granting Organizations, which provide scholarships that families may use for qualified educational expenses. It would simply give Michigan families access to an educational opportunity federal law already makes available to families elsewhere. Refusing to participate does not preserve parental choice. It restricts it.

Properly implemented, this approach helps families otherwise unable to afford the educational environment they believe best serves their children. It can open doors to Christian schools, other private schools, and additional educational opportunities that previously existed only for families possessing sufficient financial means.

But an equally important constitutional lesson exists here. Educational freedom ought not become another vehicle for federal control. The genius of the American constitutional structure lies in: 1) dividing governmental power among three federal branches; 2) dividing sovereignty between the federal government and the states; and 3) recognizing spheres of liberty belonging to individuals, families, churches, and other institutions of civil society. Thus, the most promising feature of this new policy is Washington diminishing its control over education while facilitating the ability of parents and civil society to make educational choices for themselves. The American citizenery must vigilantly preserve that distinction.

Scholarship programs must never become a Trojan horse through which government funding brings government orthodoxy into private and religious schools. A Christian school that accepts students receiving scholarships must remain genuinely Christian. Religious schools must retain authority over their mission, curriculum, faculty, standards of conduct, and religious identity. Educational choice loses its meaning if government eventually tells participating schools what they must believe or teach.

The U.S. Secretary of Education captured the proper objective when she spoke of putting children's futures “back into the hands of those who know them, love them, and are best positioned to help them reach their God-given potential.” That is the heart of the matter.

Parents possess a natural relationship of love, responsibility, and accountability toward their children. That is something no government agency can replicate. To be sure, government can assist families. It can protect children from genuine harm. But it should never presume that bureaucratic expertise supersedes the God-given responsibility of mothers and fathers.

America does not need better government schools. It needs an educational culture in which public, private, Christian, classical, charter, homeschool, and other legitimate educational models can thrive. And it needs public policy in which parents possess meaningful freedom to choose among them. If this new chapter in education policy truly returns authority to parents, respects federalism, protects religious conscience, and encourages excellence without imposing ideological conformity, it deserves celebration. Because the ultimate goal of educational freedom is not preserving institutions. It is forming free and virtuous human beings capable of preserving a free Republic.