School safety is top reason parents use choice to leave public schools
- Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 18
- 2 min read
Law enforcement agencies reported nearly 1.3 million criminal incidents on school property from 2020 to 2024, according to a new FBI report. That includes 540,000 assaults and 45,000 sex offenses. "Kids shouldn't be trapped in dangerous schools," writes Corey DeAngelis, a school choice advocate.
Bullying is the number one reason parents use choice programs to leave public schools, write researchers Misty Gallo, Colyn Ritter and Patrick J. Wolf. Low middle-school test scores rank second. "When public schools are not equipped to limit exposure to bullying behavior and when the academics of the middle school years are insufficient, parents flee the public schools if and when private school choice programs provide the financial means to do so."
Even if test scores go down when a student moves to a private school of choice, long-term success odds improve, argues Marty Lueken, director of EdChoice’s Fiscal Research and Education Center.
"Many high-quality evaluations of private school choice, such as those in Washington, D.C., Louisiana, Indiana, and Milwaukee, have found a disconnect: lower test scores, but better long-term outcomes like high school graduation and college attendance, persistence, and degree attainment," he writes.
The private school may "use a very different curriculum, such as classical, religious, or Montessori," Lueken writes. That could explain why students earn lower scores on a test designed for the public school system.
More important, "the parents who choose it might care more about school culture, discipline, religious formation, or a safe environment than a state math test score," writes Lueken. Families "choose schools that align with their values, that make their kids feel safe, or that treat them as individuals."
I learned in my reporting days that for families living in gang-ridden neighborhoods, the ability to send children to a safe, orderly school can be a matter of life and death. Will their son have to choose between being a victim or a bully? Will he play soccer or join a gang, earn a diploma or drop out, go to community college or prison? Parents were terrified their kids -- especially the boys -- would be sucked in to the real school-to-prison pipeline.
Humans have devised no more effective institutional accountability mechanisms than policies which give to unhappy clients (e.g., customers, employees, suppliers, investors) the power to take their business elsewhere.
In a minimally regulated, tax-subsidized competitive market in education services, compulsory attendance laws mean little unless, for every child whom all other schools reject, there is some school which must admit that child. Call these default-option schools "public schools" and put their operation out to bid.
As a parent who’s lived this, the bullying piece really resonates. What many don’t realize is that schools already have state laws and district policies requiring investigations once bullying is reported — yet too often nothing happens. Families are then left with a terrible choice: either keep their child in an unsafe environment or move them somewhere else and fight through layers of bureaucracy.
In our case, my son endured repeated bullying and harassment. When we finally transferred him for his safety, the Arizona Interscholastic Association denied his hardship appeal, forcing him to sit out five games — not because of the facts, but because of “process.” He was punished twice: once by his peers, and again by the system…
Maybe the real point is that the alternatives to public school are more likely to have a workable response to bullying and other disruptive behavior, such as (ultimately) expulsion.
Public schools tend to be in thrall to the "restorative justice" set of practices, that attempt not to distinguish between attacker and attacked.
If the public schools ever got serious about maintaining discipline and order so that the willing students could actually learn, we'd see some progress.
As if bullies do not exist at private schools. The author needs to read a few English biographies or novels on the issues with private schools.