United Liberty
The Importance of School Choice
Mon, 08/25/2008 - 8:24am | posted by Brett Bittner
As most schools in the Atlanta area are beginning their ‘08-‘09 school year and summer vacation ends, I am reminded once again about the money pit that is public/government education. As we dump our tax dollars into it, we are getting less of a return on our investment with each successive year of unacceptable results.
A local school system, which will remain nameless, averaged spending over $13,000 per student in 2004 (the most recent year I could find information). Their academic reputation is certainly not one that would influence me to send my child there. In fact, the superintendent’s focal point for the 2007-2008 school year was identifying gang members and prohibiting their freedom of expression through symbols, gestures, and colors. It is not a focus on ensuring the best education for the students in the county’s educational system. It is not a focus on teaching methods to reach the students. It is not a focus on achieving something, but rather a focus on something that can be easily eliminated in a school choice scenario.
Picture this: Each family in America has the ability to choose which school their child attends, public, private, charter, parochial, home, whatever. The family shops for the school that best fits what they want for their child. A successful school will offer more programs that their customers want. A successful school will offer a learning experience that their customers want. A successful school will attract their customers’ money.
How do we make this a possibility?
Right now, we are all paying taxes to the federal, state, and local governments. Through various spending decisions, they choose how much of that money is allocated to the educational systems we fund with our taxes. What if each child’s $13,000 allocation was attached to him or her to use for education? The family can decide how that $13,000 can be spent through their choice of schools.
Competition between schools would provide better opportunities for all potential pupils, as they have to offer what the families want. If a school does not meet the community’s expectations, families will choose to send their children elsewhere, they will not instruct students, thus they will not receive any funding to continue “educating.” Consistently, private schools offer a higher quality product than their public counterparts. This newfound competition will force the public schools to innovate, rather than stagnate in their mediocrity. If they are unable to match the choices available elsewhere, they will be forced to close by the free market.
The most compelling feature of the public schools is that they provide “free” transportation for those who live outside a predetermined “walking distance.” One of the loudest arguments against my proposed solution to the education crisis is that it leaves behind the poorest families, who cannot afford transportation to the school of their choice. My answer to them is that they should make transportation the focal issue in their decision-making. As with all families, the decision is about what school matches the most of their desires. If a family desires a school that will provide transportation, they will choose one that will. If a family desires a school that does not begin until 11 AM, because they believe it enhances the learning process, they will choose one that will. If a family desires a school that focuses education on Creationism over Evolution, they will choose one that will.
The choice of schools will also allow schools to choose their customers, the right to refuse service to any customer for any reason. Admission standards may be in place to limit the lesser achieving students from disrupting those with a future academically. The problem that has caused the local system to focus on gangs, rather than educating would be eliminated as a predetermined and agreed upon discipline would have been enacted at the first sign of a problem. There would be no need for sweeping “No Tolerance” statutes, since each issue could be reasonably decided upon by its merits.
As Spiderman’s uncle wisely stated in the first of Sam Raimi’s trilogy, “with great power comes great responsibility.” If the power of choice is not exercised, then the responsibility of the decision-making will affect families for generations to come.
My local school system spends about $8,000 per student. I have 4 children that I homeschool and probably spend less than $1,000 for educational materials on all 4 during the year. When I think about what I could do with $32,000…
“If a family desires a school that focuses education on Creationism over Evolution, they will choose one that will.”
I agree. But I also think that, if parents decide to send their children to a school which focuses education on Creationism, this should be further shown in their curricula. So that a center of research, which bases its studies on comparative neurosciences, for example, could decide to reject any assumption requests from people educated to creationism instead of evolutionism.
So that market could decide which thepry is best among the two.
What does creationism vs. evolution have to do with comparative neuroscience research? Specifics?
I was homeschooled, my parents taught me creationism as well as the basics of evolution. I graduated a year early as a national merit scholar and I went on to ear a degree in physics. Now, granted, most (all?) of my physics professors believed in evolution, but I was still able to understand the lectures, textbooks, etc. My brain was not ruined because I was taught creationism.
I just linked to this post in my own blog. My husband and I discuss this idea very often, and we dream of a day when all schools are competitive and privatized, and homeschoolers can get tax money to run their home school without going lowering their general economic quality of life.
I’m glad I found this blog!
Jennifer, I’m no biologist, but I’m under the impression the theory of evolution plays a rather more critical role in that field than in physics. I really don’t see why it would matter if a physicist understood evolution or not, aside from general educational enrichment and perhaps some very particular career paths.
More generally though we do have school choice, children are not required to go to public schools, as long as they go to school. It is true a lot of school districts are poorly run, but it’s the local residents who allow them to be poorly run by not taking civic responsibility come election time. You said “with great power comes great responsibility.” the power is in your hands, it sounds to me that you don’t want it. But giving it to private companies won’t make things any better for you, it will just make some people rich.
What do you think will happen to the kids who are rejected from all of the schools that suddenly have the right to refuse students for any reason they feel like? Perhaps they will be picked up by schools of last resort that just use them to generate profit and won’t bother with the education bit, perhaps they will find themselves something less productive to do.
The problems in schools must be dealt with locally, people need to stand up and take their responsibility, and the Federal and State governments need to back off enough to let them. None of these things are likely to happen however because most people would rather be slaves and complain then take responsibility for their own lives, while the Federal Government is busy trying to become the Central Government.
Nate,
I agree with you 100% that the federal and state governments are far too involved with the educational system. Neither the nation nor state is actually charged with educating children, as they have usurped that power and are using it against us as yet another aspect of control over our lives.
I don’t think you see that competition will make education (public, private, home) better overall. The hurdles in place, particularly by local school districts, for charter, private, parochial and home schools is overwhelming for those who have a better way. These hurdles (see California’s recent ban and re-legalization of home-schooling) is enforced by the involvement of a strong state and federal presence backing up the hurdles with force. This lack of competition keeps the lackluster government-run indoctrination centers in power. With competition for students and funding, ALL schools will be improved as they compete to tailor the education to the level the people want their children to be taught. THAT is the ultimate in local control. The local market controls what the curriculum will be, how it will be taught, and which students will get back what they put in. In too many cases to note, the bureaucracy of government schooling keeps children who are not interested in an education in school. What is the purpose in that?
I think we can agree that competition in the workplace leads to better workers, competition in industry leads to innovation, and competition among local retailers leads to lower prices paid by consumers.
“Perhaps they will be picked up by schools of last resort that just use them to generate profit and won’t bother with the education bit, perhaps they will find themselves something less productive to do.”
That sounds like exactly what my high school was like. And it was run by the government.
Ben
I suppose I haven’t seen the inside of too many public schools recently, so I don’t really know what the conditions there are like.
Brett,
The idea of stressing competition in every aspect of peoples lives is something I find rather revolting, it undermines any collective or mutually beneficial conception of society. Direct competition between schools is also likely to produce a host of externalities, one of which could very easily be the quality, as opposed to perceived quality, of education. Throwing education into the market economy seems like a poor solution to what is essentially a problem of the overstepping of Federal and State government power. Why try to side step the problem in one area instead of trying to tackle it across the board, where it is influencing far more then just education?
“In too many cases to note, the bureaucracy of government schooling keeps children who are not interested in an education in school. What is the purpose in that?”
Are you suggesting that compulsory education is a BAD thing?
@Jennifer:
“What does creationism vs. evolution have to do with comparative neuroscience research?”
Comparative neurosciences works on evolutionary relations between species. The MT area studied in Macaca brain, for example, has an homologous in humans.
We study monkeys and apes to understand us. So, according to this view, the comparative approuch is based on Evolutionism.
“My brain was not ruined because I was taught creationism.”
Sure. But if you were thaught that Creationism is a scientifical theory and that is better than Evolutionism as a model, a pharmaceutical industry, which works on murin models of Parkinson, for example, should have the right to be informed about this fact and to reject your request of employement as a consequence of this.
Nate,
I am not suggesting that. I am outright saying that compulsory education is a bad thing. If the student and his or her family does not deem the opportunity of an education as a necessity, why waste resources on someone who will not be getting anything out of the experience. I am reminded of something I have heard many times since I was a little boy: “The world needs ditch diggers.”
I am a homeschool mother of 3 and we are rarely home! We always have something educational or physical planned and we also have late nights making sure all assignments are done for the day. I do not understand why my tax dollars continue to go to the school while my child does not?? The government is afraid of you and you should not be of it it is suppose to be here to protect us however, we see things over time have changed and we need to advocate for our children ourselves. Why is the homeschooling ommunity not as strong as it could be today? What as parents are we doing or not doing? Sure we have the homeschool legal defense team but we need eachother more to come together as a whole putting aside religion for the sake of freedom and speak louder we need the tax dollars for higher education as homeschool parents we need money for microscopes books and lab materials we need to be able to higher a tutor if necessary join the pottery classes and get instuments just like the public school we need to be I pay for these things on top of my tax dollars and my kids will not fill your jails or graves early they will save the state money and volunteer as we do and be productive members of society in peacful ways not agreeing with every ones beliefs but respecting their right to choose. WE as a home school community need to stand up and come together now more than ever or we could see things change for the worst.
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