Let’s Have Real Education Reform
For too long we have dealt with the problems of education as if they could be fixed with budgetary proposals. I contend that the only way we will ever get lasting reform in education is by incorporating the same principals that have proven to work in the free market.
The majority of products with which we have purchasing choice have gone down in price and improved in quality over the years (computers,TV’s, telephones, food). When we have choice, manufacturers are forced to provide better value than their competitors or we walk.Compare that to how we educate our children. Every school morning ourchildren are sent to locations decided by lines drawn by bureaucrats on a map, putting them in the care of teachers we hope are competent,in environments that are sometimes dangerous, and they are often taught values with which we disagree. It is amazing how conditioned we have become to accept such treatment when it comes to the education of our children, while lesser infractions regarding a hamburger can cause us to storm out of a restaurant vowing never to return. If we wouldonly force government to compete as aggressively for our dollars as a salesman in an appliance store, I have no doubt education would improve and become less expensive.
From most statistics I have researched, private or charter schoolsare better at educating children in grades K-12 and do it for less than public schools. Private schools don’t have to be only for the wealthy. The Washington DC Opportunity Scholarship program providedvouchers for 1700 students, mostly minorities, with average family incomes of $22,000/year. The $7500 cost of each of those scholarships is less than half of what Washington DC spends per child in public schools. The performance of students in this program was significantly better than for students in DC public schools. The Washington DC program doesn’t stand alone in its success from other voucher programs that have been tried across the country. Under pressure from the 2.3 million member National Education Association (the largest teachers’ union), the Obama administration dismantled the Opportunity Scholarship program while Barack Obama publicly proclaimed to be a champion for better education.
The success of the Opportunity Scholarship program was because parents, not bureaucrats, were in charge of deciding where their children were educated. Its time Mecklenburg County put parents incharge of such critical decisions for their children. Before that happens expect a lot of arguments from “elites” claiming only they know what is best, but they are really concerned about keeping the flow of easy money coming their way.
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