What happens when families don't have a choice? What if the state regulations for homeschooling are too burdensome? What if there are no private schools or if private school tuition is too expensive? What if the local public schools are horrible, boring, unsafe, etc.?
If we want to have more choice in how our children are educated, then we need to allow competition. The massive public school system in this country is exactly the opposite of a market-based competitive system. It will exist no matter how poor of a product it produces.
Which brings me to why I wrote this post in the first place. Our president-elect does not support school choice - at least not for your family:
"Which is to say that Obama (as he has already demonstrated via his own kids) is in favor of school choice, at least when it comes to his family (he has said a variety of phoney-baloney platitudes about not "walking away" from public schools and creating more charters, etc.)"The next administration not only doesn't support school choice, but in reality won't change anything from our current failing system:
"It is tragic to see Senator Obama clinging to the failed approaches of the past, and ironic that his education platform so closely resembles that of President Bush. For, despite his protestations to the contrary, Obama's calls for massive spending increases on existing programs look like nothing so much as a third Bush term."On a related note, there is a new grassroots effort to support real education reform. I think efforts of this type will produce the much needed change that our kids can actually believe in.
2 comments:
I am SO in agreement with you on this. Even though I've got a long way to go before I have to really consider the educational options for my child, I have absolutely no interest or intention in putting her into Albuquerque's public school system. Ideally, private school would be preferred, but the tuition is almost cost prohibitive. We'd have to start saving for tuition NOW, and hope, if we have more than one child, that we could afford multiple tuition fees.
I'm disappointed in our president-elect on a number of levels, and this is one of the biggest.
We are also struggling with the financial aspect of private school. One problem is the fact that there are not many private schools to choose from in our area. If there were more schools, tuition costs would decrease.
I have found the Cato Institute to have excellent information about all aspects of educational reform, policy, etc. It is comforting to know there are smart people working on this issue!
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