First Posted: 1/22/2015
In 1955, the great economist Milton Friedman, later an adviser to President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, proposed the concept of school vouchers.
Vouchers allow students to use tax dollars to choose the school best for them, freeing them from the monopoly government schools have had for decades.
Friedman did not necessarily like school vouchers, at least not as an end. His hope was that by introducing choice into education, vouchers would create a competitive marketplace
“Vouchers are not an end in themselves, they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system,” he wrote in 1995.
Sixty years after Friedman’s proposal, we still have a long way to go to ending the government school monopoly.
Still, there are more choices today than ever before so we are headed in the right direction.
First there are the traditional parochial and other religious schools that predate even the government schools.
Then there is the home-schooling option.
Another option in some states is mandatory interdistrict school choice, which allows parents to choose which government school to send their children regardless of their ZIP code. Another option is public charter schools, which are essentially government schools empowered to innovate and are held accountable for results.
Some states offer public magnet schools, which are government schools that center around a specific theme, such as science, math or the arts.
The Internet has given us the opportunity for online schools.
Finally, there is private school choice, state programs that provide scholarships, tax credits, tax deductions, or school vouchers allowing parents to use a portion of the tax funds set aside for their children’s education to send their children to private schools.
Unfortunately, there is still a long road to travel. That is why this week has been named National School Choice Week.
Government school officials across the country claim they want school choice but then they challenge it and complain about it every chance they get.
The fact remains, most private schools outperform most government schools and for less money.
I have heard all the arguments why this is true, i.e., private schools get to choose their students, parents who send their children to private schools are often more involved, etc.
In reality, it is a whole host of reasons, including federal and state regulations that hamper the efficient education of children.
When school officials are confronted with this, their only argument, which is silly even on its face, is that the private schools should have to suffer under the same restrictions as the government schools.
In other words, let’s bring all schools down to the lowest common denominator.
Hogwash.
What this shows is that most of these government school officials don’t really care about education; they only care about government education.
Government education is a 19th century innovation that has outlived its usefulness.
If we are going to have a government education system, then it should be a school of last resort. The real goal of all professional educators should be to get government out of the business of education.
Still, if we are going to have compulsory education and we want the government to pay for it, there is a better way than building these education camps where the Constitution prevents the government from properly controlling and educating the children sent there.
Historian Robert Wright postulated that it would have been cheaper if the federal government had purchased and freed all the slaves than fight the Civil War.
A similar idea is true in education. It would be cheaper if the government paid to send children to private schools rather than run its own schools. In fact, we could give each child a $10,000 voucher, significantly more than would be needed, and still spend less than we are today.
The fact remains that the United States spends more per pupil than any other nation in the world, with the possible exception of Switzerland. Yet, our students are routinely surpassed by children in nations that spend far less.
Clearly, something is wrong.
For more than 150 years we have let the government educate our children. Now it is time to try something new.
