Education

By Keith D. Gann

We must provide a quality education by promoting school choice. The private sector will respond with cost-effective quality education, and provide an alternative to government-run schools, which indoctrinate our children with the idea that big government can solve every perceived problem.

Although there are some wonderful public schools run by exceptional and heroic individuals, the general poor quality of government-run education is even acknowledged by public school advocates. Public school teachers are more than twice as likely as the average parents to send their children to private schools! Despite this, opponents of school choice are desperate to keep things as they are, and they use fear as their tool. It is not true that school choice will destroy the public schools. Private and public schools can co-exist, and the competition will strengthen the public schools. The post office does a decent job of delivering packages because of the competition and lessons learned from companies like FedEx and UPS. The things that work best and attract students to private schools would be emulated by public schools. For example: Incompetent teachers, ubiquitous in public schools, would not survive in private schools, because this would cause the private school to lose business. Public schools would be forced to cull the incompetent teachers to compete and survive. They would respond. Right now, it is nearly impossible to dismiss a teacher, no matter how compelling the lack of performance. That would change, and have a huge impact. After all, the student-teacher interaction is where the rubber meets the road in education.

Our grade K through 12 educational system is an international joke; however, our university system is the envy of the world. Foreign nationals fill our private AND public institutions of higher learning. They pay very high tuition rates at our public colleges and universities compared to US citizens, and they are willing to do so because they are getting a good value, and quality education. Why? Because our public colleges and universities have competition from private institutions. The same approach can fix our grade K through 12 education system.

Another aspect of school choice goes beyond academic performance. The government-run schools indoctrinate our children with the idea that big government can solve every perceived problem. Despite this, there is a tendency for teachers to be advocates for big government solutions to all perceived problems. While not intentional, this bias is conveyed to the children.

How should school choice work? The bottom line is that parents should not be forced to pay twice, through taxation and tuition, for a quality education. Tax deductions, tax credits, vouchers, and any other way to meet this end are acceptable. The method should not be federally mandated, but should be controlled at the local level. The methods that work best will be copied. The federal government should facilitate this by getting out of the education game completely.