Running alongside this challenge to the Democratic Party’s base is the beginning of a social upheaval: Parents are losing faith in the public school system’s fundamental purpose—to educate their children and produce competent citizens.
The national associations for private schools and home schooling report significant, recent increases in enrollments for these alternatives. So do Catholic schools, which have worked hard to stay open with in-person instruction.
Some parents are creating “learning pods” or microschools, assembling a small number of kids in a home or common facility and hiring a trained teacher. It sounds like an upgrade of the one-room schoolhouse taught by a no-nonsense schoolmarm—before boards of education took over.
Critics will carp that all this will create more income disparity. Perhaps so, but where were these people when the public schools began to fail students years ago?
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