School Choice as the Quiet Engine Restoring America's Founding Values Through Classical Education
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "School Choice Is Bringing Back America’s Founding Values | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." November 1, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author says that while politicians and rich donors try to bring back traditional American values from the top down, parents using school choice are doing it from the bottom up. By funding or building private and homeschool co-op options, many have turned to classical, Western-focused schools that teach founding-era ideas without hurting academic results. So school choice is really a quiet cultural movement, not just an education policy.
Conclusion
School choice is much more than an education policy: it is the most effective means by which ordinary citizens are restoring and preserving America's founding values and an optimistic, aspirational society.
Premises
- Secretary Rubio and many Americans believe the U.S. must reembrace core Western values (individuality, ambition, exploration, excellence) to remain successful, and the collectivist outlook in educational institutions works against this.
- Top-down efforts such as the Trump administration's higher-education compact and wealthy alumni initiatives are aimed at the problem, but school choice has been a far more influential and largely unrecognized driver of change.
- School choice has spread rapidly since Covid (19 states with universal programs, a federal tax credit starting in 2027), and parents have also built low-cost cooperative schools in states without choice laws.
- Choice has fueled rapid growth of classical education (1,500+ schools, about 677,500 students, 5% annual growth), which teaches basic skills, logic, and the Western great books that inspired the Founders.
- Parents choose these schools largely for their traditional value systems (Indiana survey ranked values above academics) as a response to elite institutions' embrace of progressivism.
- Classically educated students do not sacrifice academic performance, scoring highly on standardized tests and college acceptance.
- Parents who volunteer time to run budget-constrained schools model persistence, self-reliance, and personal responsibility for their children.
Assumptions
- Classical curricula and traditional values instill the 'founding values' Rubio described.
- Growth in classical schooling is caused by school choice rather than by independent cultural trends.
- Parental preference for traditional values reflects a broader national shift rather than a self-selected subgroup.
- Public schools and elite institutions are broadly collectivist and hostile to Western ideals.
- A few thousand schools and under 1 million students amount to a society-wide cultural restoration.
- Founding values are well represented by the Western canon and the virtues named (self-reliance, ambition, individuality).
- Observed high test scores reflect the curriculum rather than selection effects of families who choose these schools.