During the last decade, those advocating for school choice have made real inroads into breaking the government’s stranglehold on education.
In 1999, 349,000 children attended the nation’s 1,542 charter schools. Today, that figure has ballooned to 2.05 million. Additionally, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools reports that the waiting list to get into one of the nation’s 5,637 charter schools could fill almost 5,000 more schools.
Nearly 200,000 children are attending private schools as a result of 34 school voucher and other similar private school choice programs in 19 states. According to the Friedman Foundation of Educational Choice, 130 private school choice bills were introduced in statehouses across the country last year.
Home schooling has also doubled in the last 10 years with about 1.5 million families nationwide choosing to educate their own children compared to 850,000 in 1999, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Unfortunately, there is still a long road to travel. That is why this week has been named National School Choice Week.
Government school officials across the country claim they want school choice but then they challenge it and complain about it every chance they get.
The fact remains, most private schools outperform most government schools and for less money.
I have heard all the arguments why this is true, i.e., private schools get to choose their students, parents who send their children to private schools are often more involved, etc.
In reality, it is a whole host of reasons, including federal and state regulations that hamper the efficient education of children.
When school officials are confronted with this, their only argument, which is silly even on its face, is that the private schools should have to suffer under the same restrictions as the government schools.
In other words, let’s bring all schools down to the lowest common denominator.
What this shows is that most of these government school officials don’t really care about education; they only care about government education.
Government education is a 19th century innovation that has outlived its usefulness, if it had any.
If we are going to have a government education system, then it should be a school of last resort. The real goal of all professional educators should be to get the government out of the business of education.
Still, if we are going to have compulsory education and we want the government to pay for it, there is probably a better way than building these education camps — which are more like prisons in some urban districts — where the Constitution prevents the government from properly controlling and educating the children sent there.
Historian Robert Wright postulated that it would have been cheaper if the federal government had purchased and freed all the slaves than fight the Civil War.
I suspect a similar idea would be true in the education arena. That is, it would be cheaper if the government paid to send children to private schools rather than run its own school systems.
A few seconds with a calculator seems to bear this out. There are 55.5 million school-age children in the United States. A $5,000 voucher for each child, which would cover tuition at the vast majority of private schools in the United States, would cost $277.5 billion. There are other factors that would come into play, of course, but you get the picture.
In fact, we could double that voucher to $10,000 and still spend less than we are today.
In the 2008-09 school year, as a nation we spent $604.86 billion on primary and secondary government education, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of that amount, $311.89 billion went to the salaries and benefits of the government schools’ union workers. We obviously cannot afford that. At the end of the 2009 fiscal year, government school systems had a combined debt of $399.12 billion.
The fact remains that the United States spends more per pupil than any other nation in the world, with the possible exception of Switzerland. Yet, our students are routinely surpassed by children in nations that spend less.
Clearly, something is wrong.
For more than 150 years we have let the government educate our children. Now it is time to try something new.
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Tom,
First, I’m amazed no one else has commented here yet.
Next, while I’m sure we’re in agreement on the points I’m about to raise, since you didn’t include them in your column I’ll do so now.
Would replacing public schools with a blanket voucher system lead to widespread, dramatic improvement in education in America? Most likely.
However, the problem remains that the same government which has resisted heavily the trend toward private, charter, and home schooling and perpetuates the compulsory component of education in our country is the same government which enjoys the prerogative to set the criteria of accreditation for elementary and secondary schools as well as home schooling programs.
As long as that condition is in effect the door remains wide open for government to execute an end-around of any effort to fully privatize education. It would be done by transitioning the U.S. Department of Education into a regulatory agency. With a little legislation and a lot of steadily mounting body of regulation, any gang in Washington, D.C., could weigh-down the private institutions of learning — in the same manner that has been done to health care over the decades — until the perceived problem becomes a political boogie man in the arena of public discussion.
And the public hysteria and furor gets whipped-up just in time for some enterprising, young Progressive politician to promote a “solution” contained in a 2,000+ page stack of legislation.
Even if public opinion were to lean overwhelmingly toward a universal voucher system, the same government/dictatorial Dept. of Ed would likely be granted the authority to place any number of conditions on the money represented by those vouchers before access to all of can be enjoyed by the school chosen by the parents of a given student.
Would a universal education voucher program have the potential to open the door for tremendous improvements in learning opportunities? Yes.
Would the potential for hyjinx by crafty federal politicians go away? Only if the vouchers coincide with the complete elimination of the U.S. Dept. of Education.
Tom,
First, I’m amazed no one else has commented here yet.
Next, while I’m sure we’re in agreement on the points I’m about to raise, since you didn’t include them in your column I’ll do so now.
Would replacing public schools with a blanket voucher system lead to widespread, dramatic improvement in education in America? Most likely.
However, the problem remains that the same government which has resisted heavily the trend toward private, charter, and home schooling and perpetuates the compulsory component of education in our country is the same government which enjoys the prerogative to set the criteria of accreditation for elementary and secondary schools as well as home schooling programs.
As long as that condition is in effect the door remains wide open for government to execute an end-around of any effort to fully privatize education. It would be done by transitioning the U.S. Department of Education into a regulatory agency. With a little legislation and a lot of steadily mounting body of regulation, any gang in Washington, D.C., could weigh-down the private institutions of learning — in the same manner that has been done to health care over the decades — until the perceived problem becomes a political boogie man in the arena of public discussion.
And the public hysteria and furor gets whipped-up just in time for some enterprising, young Progressive politician to promote a “solution” contained in a 2,000+ page stack of legislation.
Even if public opinion were to lean overwhelmingly toward a universal voucher system, the same government/dictatorial Dept. of Ed would likely be granted the authority to place any number of conditions on the money represented by those vouchers before access to all of it can be enjoyed by the school chosen by the parents of a given student.
Would a universal education voucher program have the potential to open the door for tremendous improvements in learning opportunities? Yes.
Would the potential for hyjinx by crafty federal politicians go away? Only if the vouchers coincide with the complete elimination of the U.S. Dept. of Education.