In every area of service in the US we see that increasing competition and eliminating monopolies and near-monopolies always has the effect of increasing service and quality and options to the consumer while also decreasing cost.
Don't we want increased quality, better service and more options in the education of our children and grandchildren? Don't we want decreased costs as well?
Wouldn't it be beneficial to bring competition into the area of the education of our children by eliminating the near-monopoly on education held by the government? Shouldn't we end taxation for education and make all education privately funded? KeyStroke (forgot to sign this)
There is at least one major issue with that train of thought: Only children with wealthy families would be able to attend school because there would not be a market for the poorer families. Then only the wealthy would be educated and hence the wealthy get wealthier and poor get poorer and class division could get worse than it already is in the US.
One very good way to mitigate the above concern is to radically stimulate contributions to charities that would provide for economic relief when those contributions are used for educaton of the poor and otherwise disadvantaged children. A simple doubling of the tax deduction you can take for such a contribution (up to a given limit) makes the most sense to me. This way government is still looking out for the educational welfare of poor and disadvantaged children, but we get to also have consumer choice and competition in the marketplace for those contributions. KeyStroke (forgot to sign this)
Another thing to think about here is the difference between publically funded and publically run. The government could still pledge to pay up to a certain amount for every child to go to school, yet the schools themselves be privately run and competing. An example of this in education (though at the University level) is the University of California system. This system has a number of world-class universities (UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UC Davis, ...), while remaining largely public-funded. The University of California is a private institution with a public charter, meaning that while it is recognized in California law and funded largely by the Government, it is run as an independent body. They are funded for teaching on a basis of number of students, so they have every incentive to make their schools desirable to attend. A similar system could potentially work for secondary or even primary education.
The biggest problem with public education in the U.S. is that it's funded by local property taxes. In areas with low property values, the schools have less money per pupil. Tlogmer 08:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Links[]
- The fraud of Public Education - https://archive.is/20131016013713/www.vdare.com/buchanan/070305_education.htm