School choice opponents demand parental responsibility but deny the parental rights necessary to fulfill it. Real parental involvement requires freedom to choose their children’s schools. Until parents can exercise that freedom, stop blaming them for the failures of schools others chose for them.

Robert Keston, Executive Director Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness, thinks PRI’s new book is half right. Public schools in California and across the country are Not as Good as You Think, but he disagrees that school choice for the middle class—or anyone else—is the answer.

Keston writes in the Wall Street Journal that “’educational choice’ is not a legitimate alternative” to “years of neglect by parents.” He adds, “Moving children around to ‘schools of choice’ still brings the parents with them, parents who are not investing the time in their children or their community.”

A lack of parental involvement is one the top excuses for public school failure. But apologists are largely responsible for blocking the very involvement they say they want when they oppose parents choosing their children’s schools in the first place.

Reminiscent of the educational establishment criticized by C.S. Lewis in “Men Without Chests,” school choice opponents demand parental responsibility but deny the parental rights necessary to fulfill it. As Lewis puts it, “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.”

The modern-day schooling system has largely usurped parents’ control over their children’s education, then acts shocked when they don’t show up for the bake sale. And make no mistake: when public school apologists refer to involved parents they usually mean boosters who’ll raise money—not uncomfortable questions like, “Why can’t my child read at grade level?”

Consider what happened when San Juan Capistrano parents “got involved.” With an annual budget exceeding $560 million, students in the Capistrano Unified School District were being taught in dilapidated portables. Rather than fix the problem, the school board approved a $52 million administrative Taj Mahal. So parents started a recall campaign. They ultimately lost on a technicality, but the district superintendent who pushed for the new building retaliated.

On school time and the taxpayer dime, the district superintendent and his subordinates illegally obtained petitioners’ identities then broke into confidential student records to access the names of their children to put them on an “enemies” list. Though the superintendent and his co-conspirators were indicted this summer, San Juan Capistrano parents got involved the only way they could, and for that involvement their children became targets.

Had those parents been allowed meaningful involvement, they could have transferred their children to schools that put students ahead of administrators. Stemming the tide of transfers would have put powerful pressure on Capistrano Unified School District officials to get their priorities in order.

Real parental involvement requires freedom to choose their children’s schools. Until parents can exercise that freedom, stop blaming them for the failures of schools others chose for them.