Why Does the Government Fight So Hard Against School Choice?

It is really all about power and control.

 This Has to Stop - - Caring Parents Need To Step Up

Neal Boortz

In writing about Chris Christie’s speech I mentioned something about teacher’s unions.  This is the convention week .. so I’ll deal with this in greater (and more entertaining depth) later on.  But just to put a bug in your ear … across the country we are seeing teacher’s unions and government education bureaucrats fight back more and more against school choice.  We’re spending, on average, $11,400 per year for each child in a government school, kindergarten through high school.  What are we getting?  Kids who can’t even fill out a job application or read an apartment lease.  Hell --- many of them can’t even make change.

In California they have “parent trigger” laws.  After a government school has received a failing grade for a number of consecutive years the parents can “pull the trigger” and transform that school into a charter school.  Just such an even has occurred in one California jurisdiction – but the local school   board is refusing to allow the parents to proceed, even after a court ordered them to do so.  The school board chairman is saying that he will defy the court right up to the point of being arrested.

Click on the title to read the entire article.  It's short.

We need a free market in education, folks.  Too many people are making way too much money and turning out an inferior product.  And please, I'm not talking about the good teachers out there who are doing their best to work within a system that works against them at every turn.  The system is flawed! It is failing!  We have to wrest control back from the bureaucrats and give it back to the parents and the communities.  We need to make it easier for people and groups to innovate and try new things.  

Students in the US currently rank 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math (out of a ranking of 34 countries.)  We are below average in math!  How can that be?  It is time to loosen federal government control over education and give the people who want to improve our schools on a local level the opportunity to do so.  What do we have to lose?  

---Katie

Separation of School and State

Separation of Church and State 

Issac Morehouse

"If you like the idea of a population that is competent in math, science, reading, writing, physics, philosophy, biology, history, economics and every other field of knowledge, you should oppose state support for education. Without resorting to complicated debates about curricula, teachers unions and budgets, the same economic analysis Smith and Hume used to understand the relationship between church and state can be used to understand the relationship between school and state. State support for education results in a less educated populace."

At the American Enterprise Institute's Values and Capitalism blog, Isaac Morehouse makes a case for separation of school and state by looking closely at the historic arguments made for separation of church and state and applying them to the concept of separating school and state. It is a compelling comparison.  Just as a government supported religion loses its fervent followers, a population that has its education provided and paid for by the government loses its enthusiasm for learning.

Click on the the title above to read the entire article.

---Katie