As first appearing in the Education News on August 14, 2013:

Growing up in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Saint Louis a decade ago, Korey Stewart-Glaze knew where he went to school mattered. Korey’s neighborhood high school is a dropout factory; fewer than half of the students graduate on time. If he had attended that school, he says “I might have fallen in with the wrong crowd and be in jail or dead today.” That was the fate for many of his friends, but that would not be his fate. At a key moment in his life, Korey’s path was altered. His story can teach us a valuable lesson about what it means to provide a great public education to all students.

Rather than continue on in the traditional public schools, Korey’s family scraped together enough money to send him to a school that would put him on a different path, De La Salle Middle School at St. Matthew’s. He then earned a scholarship to a well-regarded private high school and went on to graduate from Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., in 2012.

Korey’s decision to attend De La Salle proved to be very beneficial for him — and for the public at large. We all benefit every time our schools — public or private — succeed in turning children into motivated and productive citizens. Yet, for some reason, we have constructed a Great Wall that absolutely prohibits public funds from going to private schools to support the education of children whose parents cannot afford to pay tuition. In essence, we have decided that only government-run schools are capable of providing public education. This just is not so. No such wall exists in higher education, where students can use publicly subsidized loans to attend private schools.

Noted economist Milton Friedman regularly argued that government funding of education does not necessitate government provision of education. Echoing this sentiment, former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham-Keegan wrote in 2000, “If we want to save the public schools, we mustn’t confuse the ideal of public education — that every child has the right to a good K-12 education at public expense — with any particular system, including the one we’ve got.” The system “we’ve got” is not public education, it is just that — a system. Public education should not mean assigning students to a specific type of school, regardless of quality, but rather that we provide access to a quality education, regardless of the type of school delivering that education.

Our traditional public schools are filled with thousands of Koreys. Some are trapped in failing schools. Some are in good schools that simply are not meeting their needs. Our narrow definition of public education prevents more students like Korey from receiving the education they deserve.

It is time to tear down the long-standing wall between public dollars and private schools so that more students like Korey can benefit from the increased educational options it would bring. Private schools should be enlisted into the cause of providing publicly financed education. Many private schools could do that very well.

James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is the education policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.