I too have some [little] hope that a segment of private education will resist the call of government funds and concomitant control — but it is likely to be restricted to the same ones who have done so historically. These are they which not only operate the schools from a deeply religious foundation, but whose student body is made up from families with the same worldview in practice — those who value independence more than tax assistance.
In North Carolina, it was the parents and administrators of the Christian schools which led the fight for regulatory relief in North Carolina during the 1970’s, turning out as many as five thousand peaceful demonstrators in the streets of Raleigh while N.C. State Board of Education v. N.C. Christian Schools was in court.
And it’s why the colleges which are most known for turning down direct federal student aid are small evangelical schools like Grove City College, not the more establishmentarian Dukes and Wake Forests of higher education.
Obviously it’s not universal. There have been sharp divisions in the homeschooling community in neighboring South Carolina and Virginia when choice proposals appeared to threaten their existing freedoms; some are more jealous of their rights than others. And I recently asked a choice proponent from another state about his jurisdiction’s requirement that religious schools receiving aid must exempt students from religious instruction. How, then, could they maintain their character as religious institutions? I wondered. He unblinkingly explained that many of those schools (which have excellent reputations for academics and discipline, attracting many students on those bases alone) found the tax funding more attractive than their doctrinal distinctives. Or, I might add, their liberty.
There will always be a faithful remnant, I think, but it reminds me again that the American Revolution was won by a determined and self-sacrificing minority, not an overwhelming popular groundswell of Lockeian principle.
