School Choice Is Not a Secret Plot to Promote ‘Christian Nationalism’

S chool-choice opponents are going through a tough time. Twelve states now have universal or near universal educational-choice programs, up from zero just five years ago. More than one-third of American school children will soon be eligible for a voucher, education savings account, tax-credit scholarship, or tax rebate for private-school tuition. Whatever opponents have been doing, it clearly has not worked.

Maybe that is why they have settled on a new argument against school choice: It promotes “Christian nationalism.” At the recent 2024 convention of the American Federation of Teachers, Michigan State University professor Josh Cowen said that the push for school choice is “all about remaking our country in the image of Christian nationalism.” Earlier this year, Rachel Laser, CEO of Americans United for the Separation of Church and state, said, “Christian Nationalists and their lawmaker allies across the country have been emboldened by recent Supreme Court decisions that undermined church-state separation. They are pushing private school voucher schemes like never before as part of their crusade against public education and to enlarge their own power.” Pennsylvania state senator Lindsey Williams told an anti-school-choice rally earlier this year that voucher supporters shared the goals of Christian nationalists, “a country that favors evangelical Christian beliefs over all other beliefs.”

It is not surprising that teachers’ unions and their supporters would attack proponents of school choice. Teachers’ unions painting their opponents as wicked is old-hat. As the great American political philosopher Russell Kirk stated back in 1961, “The dervishes of the National Education Association are much given to denouncing any man who ventures to criticize anything in any state-supported school as ‘an enemy of the public schools.’”

It is a bit surprising, however, that the defenders of the public-school system would levy this claim against school-choice supporters. In fact, it is actually quite funny to anyone who knows the history of the American public-school system.

One could argue that the project of establishing a public school system in America was a Christian nationalist one. Noted education historian David Tyack and his co-authors framed it this way in a 1979 piece in the American Journal of Sociology, arguing that the development of public education, particularly in the northern and western states, “can best be understood as a social movement implementing a commonly held ideology of nation building.” And evangelical Protestantism was at the core of this enterprise.

In Homeschool: An American History, educational historian Milton Gaither wrote of the antebellum period, “The overwhelming majority of reformers and advocates of public education in every state of the Union were evangelical Protestants, many of them ministers. . . . The common faith was preached uniformly in the public schools, Sunday schools, the pulpit, and a host of formal and informal associations that together made up what historical Charles Foster called, ‘the Evangelical united front.’”

Joel Spring, professor at the City University of New York, noted this fact in The American School: 1642–1993. He wrote, “In the 1830s, the desire to establish public schools as a means of creating a common culture was heightened by increased immigration, particularly by immigration of Irish Catholics. Discriminated against by the English, Irish Catholics threatened Protestant domination of American culture. The growth of public schools paralleled the growth of the immigrant and enslaved populations.”

We could go on. But here is the key point: At the very moment that actual Christian nationalists had the power to impose an education system on the nation that would deliver the results they wanted, they did not choose a system built on the principles of choice. They built a public-education system built on the principles of control. Their efforts focused on centralizing and standardizing education. Train teachers uniformly in normal schools. Organize schools the same way. Teach everyone the same curriculum. Pay teachers uniformly. If you have a singular vision of what schools should teach and how they should teach it, you need to centralize power. Giving people choices decentralizes power.

This lesson of history should resonate today. Providing individuals with the ability to choose the school of their choice is a terrible way to promote Christian nationalism, or any single ideology, on a grand scale. And it is irony on stilts that organizations such as teachers’ unions, who push hard on the notion of a centralized education system (albeit a centralized one with them at the helm), are shouting warnings about the risks of Christian nationalism. They are working to create a system ripe for hijacking. No escape, no alternative choices, whoever wins the school-board election or gets enough seats on the state board of education gets to decide what is taught.

You will notice we said that school choice was a terrible way to promote ideas on a grand scale. Of course, a pluralistic education system may allow some schools to teach things we find objectionable. It will allow for schools of a variety of different faiths and of no faith at all. It will allow for schools with a progressive pedagogical philosophy and schools with a traditional pedagogical philosophy. Catholic schools, Muslim schools, Hindu schools, Montessori schools, Waldorf schools, classical schools, anti-racist, Afro-centric, performing arts, STEM, and language-immersion schools — the list goes on and on. Not every school will be for every child, but a system like this will be impossible for any single ideological faction to take over. The same cannot be said about the public-school system.

That is the beauty of an educational system that is built on pluralism, it allows individuals to choose the type of school that serves their family best without imposing their values on others. Try as opponents might to steer the conversation away from freedom, this is what the school-choice movement is all about. Progressive Berkeley law professor Jack Coons, summed up the issue well back in 1981 when he wrote, “Insofar as the purposes and means of education remain conflicting and obscure, the policy question is not ‘What is best?’ Rather, it is ‘How do we allocate authority to decide for the individual child?’ Beyond that vague minimum about which society does agree, who should decide what and where the child shall learn? There are two candidates for this authority, the educational managers and the family.”

There is no question where choice opponents land on that question: They want the educational managers in charge. Luckily, America appears to be on the sides of families.

James V. Shuls is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri—St. Louis. Michael Q. McShane is the director of national research at EdChoice. Both are senior fellows at the Show-Me Institute.