competition improves

I was stoked this morning when, listening to the radio while putting my lunch together, I finally heard of a group organized to lobby for school choice: www.texansforschoolchoice.com. As some may know, my interest and advocacy for this was born during the months after Greer was born and I took a class from a professor who wrote a book on the topic.

What if you were relegated to the doctor(s) or dentist(s) in your geographical area? What if you felt more comfortable with a gynecologist who practiced 5 miles away, but your insurance paid nothing unless the doctor was located within a 3 mile radius of your home? Wouldn't you want to choose your own proctologist instead of the insurance company doing it for you? Isn't the education of your child as important? Don't you think you should have the right to send your child to the school of your choice using the taxes you pay, to pay for it? If your child was more inclined to, say, architecture, science, biology, social studies, art, mechanics, math, etc., wouldn't you want to put him/her in a school that specializes in such an area instead of sending them to a cookie-cutter school where, with little deviation, every child learns the exact same thing?
The way to reform and improve public education is to make schools, whether public, private or home-based, compete with each other. Competition has made nearly everything in American life better; why not K-12 education? It would still be public in that every child would have the equivalent of state-public-school-funding-per-child attached to them. However, it would go with them to pay for whatever school their parents choose, including home schooling.

The way to reform schools and the quality of education is NOT through increased funding and teacher pay. As funding has grown, quality, at best, has remained the same (http://www.txccri.org/publications/2004-05-sf-TCCRI-TPPF-Myths.pdf). How would more money help? Also, when you divide the average public school teacher salary in Texas (a little over $40,000) by 75% (assuming a 9-month school-year), they make as much as some of the rest of us do in the private sector. Regardless, I personally do not consider them underpaid. In my mind, one is underpaid only if another employer is willing to pay them more. In that case, the choice is theirs'. If $40,000/year is not enough, work during the summer. Otherwise, enjoy the extra two months (as compared to some of the rest of us).

If teacher pay is low, it is held back by the existence of the unions to which they belong. Unions do little more than provide job protection and benefits to the slackers amongst them. (If you were educated in Texas public schools, you can remember some of the good and bad.) I would guess that those that are active in the union are made up in good part by such slackers. If a teacher is good, and he/she knows it, what do they have to worry about? There will always be demand for their services. There are probably some good teachers that are amongst active union members because they feel like they have no help from home. In this case, it's the parents that are the slackers. Wouldn't parental school choice require them to become more involved?

Some of the main points made by those opposed to allowing parents to choose (i.e. asking 'Big Brother' for permission) would be laughable if they weren't so sad. Accountability. You hear this mainly for the educational bureaucrats who think they know it all. Isn't the quality of a child's education ultimately accountable to the parents?? Shouldn't schools be accountable to them?? I have a fairly good recollection of what I learned in what grade, particularly in math. I’m sure with a little research, I could find out more. That’s not to mention what my wife remembers.

Property values. A percentage of property values in some areas reflect the quality of the schools in the area/school district. This has been the band-aid method most parents have used to ensure the best education possible for their kids. They “vote with their feet”, and move to where the most highly rated schools are. Hence, property values rise. At least these parents are involved, but, alas, a public school is a public school is a public school. All administrators have to do is look out the window, see all the houses that surround their school and know they do not have to compete for those parents’ business. There’s less (not necessarily ‘no’) pressure. Many parents have played this game because they figured it was all they could do…until now. They just need to ask themselves what’s more important, the quality of their child's education or the value of the property upon which one's house rests?? Of, if they are still convinced their kids are receiving the best education possible, what about the children who either lack quality parenting or whose parents do not have the means to afford more than the very worst public schools?

Lack of capacity at private schools (http://www.texans4fairfunding.org/). Have they not heard of the American ability to adapt?? If a private school brings in more and more students, they would do what any company in the private sector would do in a similar situation; they would expand operations i.e. add teachers, facilities, tools and instruments of learning, etc. It is not a tough concept to grasp. One of my personal favorites is that it would not be the "parents who have the choice; it would be the private schools' who would have the choice to accept or reject." So? Parents would have to find another school. My guess is that the most rejected type of student would be the troublemaker. Rejecting these students would have two beneficial results. First, it would force the parent(s) to be more involved, if only to straighten his/her child out. The child is probably the troublemaking sort due to a lack of such attention in the first place. Second, it would free the classroom of such scalawags thereby allowing teachers to TEACH!

The only people who should really be worried about school choice are parents who are not currently as involved as they should be, the teachers of the lowest quality and the bureaucrats who would equate to fat that is trimmed by free-market competition. If you've ever seen Total Recall, they remind me of the Ronny Cox villain Vilos Cohaagen. School Choice is the rock in the middle of the mountain that has the martian handprint carved out of it. Once parents are allowed to depress that rock, new life will be breathed into our children's education.