Let My Children Go

The exodus is the foundational story of the nation of Israel. Along with the creation itself, it’s the most important story in the Old Testament. For hundreds of years, the children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt. But the LORD looked upon their misery and sent his servant Moses to deliver them from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.

Pharoah refused to let the children of Israel go, for his heart was hard. So the LORD sent upon the land of Egypt ten devastating plagues – great acts of judgment which demonstrated the LORD’s superiority over the gods of Egypt. Only after the angel of death had struck down all the firstborn in Egypt did Pharaoh relent and allow Israel to depart.

Yet even then Pharoah changed his mind and sent his armies in pursuit of his former slaves. But the LORD rescued Israel by parting the waters of the Red Sea, allowing them to cross dry-shod to safety. When the chariots and horsemen of Pharaoh followed, the LORD brought the waters crashing down, drowning them in the depths of the sea.

Like Israel in bondage, millions of America’s school kids are trapped in failing government schools. This is not to say that all public schools are rotten; there are some fine public schools staffed by dedicated teachers and administrators. However, large swathes of the public school system are an unmitigated disaster. This is particularly true in big cities, where the large majority of students are minorities.

Kids emerging from these systems are woefully unprepared for life. Uneducated or undereducated kids face a grim future; they are at high risk of poverty and criminal activity.

This state of affairs was a national embarrassment, even before the outbreak of Covid 19 in 2020. The pandemic both exposed and exacerbated the nation’s educational crisis. Many states instituted lockdown policies which severely disrupted learning. Yet it quickly became clear that the virus posed no significant risk to school-aged kids. Moreover, kids were not a serious source of spread, despite hysterical claims to the contrary.

Parents watched in horror as their kids unraveled academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. Not only did classwork suffer, but athletics and other activities were suspended. Kids became isolated, anxious and depressed. Yet for two years, the teacher’s unions and Democratic politicians insisted that schools remain shuttered. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, was especially militant in her opposition to reopening schools.

Let’s glance at two specific public school systems.

The Baltimore City Schools enroll roughly 76,000 students, supported by a massive budget of $1.62 billion. This works out to $21,606 per student! The budget has increased sharply in recent years, despite the fact that enrollment has fallen. The vast majority (93%) of kids who attend Baltimore public schools are black.

Maryland taxpayers have gotten a miserable return on their hefty investment. The state of Maryland recently released an assessment of the public school system. Particularly for Baltimore, the results were not pretty. In fact, they should be appalling for anyone who cares about the well-being of children.

Every Maryland school was evaluated using a five-star scale. Five-star schools are considered excellent. Of Baltimore’s 147 schools, only a single school was awarded this top rating. On the other hand, 29 Baltimore schools were assigned the lowest one-star rating, indicating a failing institution in drastic need of improvement. 83 schools received a two-star rating, indicating poor performance. Thus, by the government’s own assessment, 76% of Baltimore schools were considered either poor or outright failing.

Only 16% of Baltimore high school students demonstrate grade level proficiency in English. For math, this figure is even more embarrassing: 9%.

23 Baltimore public schools reported zero students who demonstrated proficiency in math. That sentence is not an error: not one single student in 23 schools possesses math skills appropriate for their grade level.

The 4-year graduation rate for Baltimore public high schools is a deplorable 68.7%. Yet even those students who manage to graduate often lack basic skills; their prognosis in life is poor.

The deficiency of Baltimore’s public schools is hardly exceptional.

Consider the massive Chicago Public School (CPS) system, which boasts 649 schools and over 340,000 students. 90% of CPS kids are minorities. The Chicago Public School system currently spends an astounding $29,000 per student per year. Since 2020, spending has soared by 63%, despite the fact that enrollment has fallen by 8.9%.

Only 21% of Chicago public high school kids are proficient in math; reading proficiency also languishes at 21%. Despite this abysmal failure, the graduation rate for Chicago public high schools somehow rose from 77% in 2019 to 83% in 2022. This bizarre discordance strongly suggests that the CPS is throwing in the towel, allowing more kids to graduate even though fewer of those kids possess the skills necessary to merit a diploma.

The Illinois Department of Education reported 30 schools where not a single student was able to read at their grade level. 22 of those schools are in the CPS system. Additionally, there are 53 Illinois schools (33 in CPS) where not a single student is proficient in math.

You might think that the people of Chicago would be eager remedy this situation. Sadly, that’s not the case. The city recently elected Brandon Johnson as mayor. Johnson is a former teacher in the CPS system, who also worked as an organizer for the Chicago Teacher’s Union. As you might expect, he’s a staunch union ally.

Outgoing mayor Lori Lightfoot struggled mightily, but we should credit her for at least offering pushback against the powerful Chicago Teacher’s Union. When the CTU went on strike, Lightfoot rightly insisted that students needed to be in school and criticized the union for “[abandoning] kids and their families.”

It’s highly unlikely that there will be any such accountability for the CTU under the leadership of Brandon Johnson. The new mayor is fully committed to the same failed policies which have made the Chicago Public Schools such a mess in the first place.

The deterioration of America’s public schools has driven many families to seek a path through the Red Sea. A generation ago, homeschooling was rare. Studies estimate that in 1973, there were only 13,000 homeschooled kids nationwide. However, this number grew rapidly and by 1993 the homeschool ranks reached 1 million. In 2019, just before the onset of the pandemic, there were roughly 2.5 million homeschoolers.

Following the Covid shutdowns, many more families elected to homeschool. By 2021, the homeschool congregation had jumped to 3.72 million kids. This number has fallen as schools have reopened, but there are still roughly 3.15 million homeschooled children in the US.

Undoubtedly, homeschooling is here to stay. Several factors energize the movement. Many parents simply recognize that the education offered by their local government school is poor. For others, the pandemic revealed a corrupt system which completely fails to seek the best interests of their children. Perhaps most disturbing, the public schools have recently been flooded with the political agenda of the radical left. Kids are being indoctrinated with all manner of LGBT propaganda and Critical Race Theory.

Homeschooling is not the only way to escape the public school system. School choice legislation has experienced brilliant success recently. For decades, the school choice movement lay dormant, achieving some limited success, but also suffering some frustrating reversals.

However, over the past 2 years, six states have approved universal school choice programs, including Arizona, Arkansas, Utah, West Virginia, Iowa and Florida. By sheer size, Florida is the most significant of these states, with over 3 million school-aged kids. And it seems like each day, more states are taking up the gauntlet.

School choice programs offer all families substantial resources (usually about $6,000-8,000) in the form of vouchers or educational savings accounts which can be applied towards their child’s education. Families can use these funds to help cover tuition at a private school of their choice. Alternatively, the funds can help cover homeschool costs. Of course, families who are satisfied with their local public school can continue to send their kids there.

Opponents often claim that school choice programs will defund the public school system. However, the public schools will still enjoy the same level of funding on a per student basis. And as we’ve noted, this level of funding is usually more than adequate for educating those students who choose to attend.

For the sake of our nations’ children, let’s all hope, pray, work and vote so that this trend continues. A great new exodus has begun. More than 3000 years ago, the children of Israel were delivered from oppression at the hand of Pharaoh. Today, millions of kids are being given the opportunity to escape the misery of a failed public educational system, so that they might flourish in life. Surely this gladdens the heart of God.