Why Putting Your Kids In Public Schools Is Now More Dangerous Than Ever

Joy Pullmann is correct about the public schools — and the sad fact is that they’ve been a mess for a very long time, are getting worse, and are un-fixable:

Polls find the majority of U.S. parents don’t want to put their kids in public schools, but most do anyway. A new book explains why they should stop, and here’s a gameplan for achieving that.

When I was a child, my parents listened to Dr. James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” radio show. He regularly hosted education guests, including Raymond and Dorothy Moore, who helped launch the homeschooling revival in the 1980s due to concerns about public schools pressuring children too much, too soon. Those concerns persist, and have been compounded by many other mass education failures.

At the time, almost nobody homeschooled except for off-the-grid apocalypse types or Mennonites. Today, of course, practically everyone knows a homeschool family, and homeschooling has come a long way from the Amish jean jumper days.

These enrollment trends are decidedly not, however, what parents wish they could do with their kids. Currently, approximately 86 percent of U.S. children attend public schools. Yet only 33 percent of Americans, in the latest national poll, consider public schooling their top choice. Fifteen percent say their top choice is a charter school — a privately run, independent public school — and the plurality, 42 percent, say their top choice is a private school. Homeschooling is the first choice of 7 percent.

Why Aren’t Americans Acting on Their Discontent?

So there’s a large gap between what American parents want for their children and what they are settling for. Other polls reflect that. Ninety-three percent of private-school parents are satisfied with their child’s school. So are 90 percent of homeschoolers. Seventy-three percent of public-school parents are “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with their child’s school, a 20-point drop.

Read more: The Federalist

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