Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This week, Jan. 24-30, is National School Choice Week and Gloucester County parents should take note.

During the 2014-15 school year, 171 Gloucester students, including 89 for religious reasons, were schooled at home. That’s in addition to Gloucester kids whose parents not only paid taxes for public schools, but paid for private or parochial school tuition. 

The need for an educated citizenry in order to maintain a self-governing constitutional republic as this country was founded is without challenge. But surveys reveal that 57 percent of the nation’s 17-year-olds weren’t able to place the Civil War within 50 years of its occurrence in history, and 83 percent of college graduates couldn’t name the Gettysburg address as the source of the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s much the same with questions about “separation of powers” in government. And if the college gr...