The Choice Channel

“Hardly anyone disputes the contention that the modern public school is seriously flawed. Test scores continue to be poor while metal detectors are found in the more violent schools. Welfare-state liberals argue that schools in poor areas need more money to place them on an equal footing with their richer counterparts. Conservatives usually reply that the solution is a voucher system that would break the government monopoly on education by restoring choice and control to parents. But virtually all participants on both sides of the debate concede the nobility of the original reformers; in their view, the ‘good intentions’ of such school champions as Horace Mann and John Dewey led to ‘unintended consequences.’” (07/98)

http://tinyurl.com/l6cvq

“When parents send a child to a tax-funded school, they sacrifice their autonomy to alien interests. The state has goals of its own that are distinct from those of parents. Parents are able to economize by availing themselves of a ‘free’ school, but the bargain is Faustian. The child is subjected to indoctrination outside parental control. The price of tax-funded schooling is that parents give up their children to become instruments of the state. Under totalitarian regimes, the subjugation of parental belief systems to those of the state is blatant. Schoolchildren are propagandized into the doctrines of the leadership, their thoughts molded to the state’s purposes.” (09/99)

http://tinyurl.com/zo4hc

“The usual argument against public education is very convincing. And very wrong. It runs something like this: Public schools have become breeding grounds for violence and sexual promiscuity; they often are outlets for socialist propaganda; they now constitute a formidable enemy of Christianity (by teaching evolution and prohibiting prayer and Bible reading) and of the family (by teaching sex education and deriding traditional authority structures). And so on — which is not an unmitigated tragedy, since it is being used, under the providence of God, to lead more and more Christians to abandon the system of public education. No matter what the reason, that is certainly a good result. Unfortunately, the argument above is not as principled as it looks.” (1981)

http://tinyurl.com/3axmbx

“Public education is the most expensive ‘gift’ that most Americans will ever receive. Government school systems are increasingly coercive and abusive both of parents and students. Government schools in hundreds of cities, towns, and counties have been effectively taken over by unions, and children are increasingly exploited, thwarted, and stymied for the benefit of organized labor. Government schools are increasingly run by the unions and for the unions. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander observed, ‘After the post office, schools are the most unionized activity in America. [Teachers unions] collect a lot of money in dues, they are often the largest lobby in the state, they are very, very powerful.’” (07/96)

http://tinyurl.com/226wlj

“Parents seeking educational opportunities for their children are now finding more options available to them. Inspired largely by the success of Arizona’s Tuition Tax Credit Program, a number of states are establishing tax credits to support scholarships that families may use to send their children to both public and private schools. While it was not the first state to implement such a program, the Arizona model merits close scrutiny as a primer for success, particularly because it has withstood legal challenge and was deemed constitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court in 1999. Similar programs have been enacted over the past year in Pennsylvania and Florida and are being considered in a number of other states, including Ohio, which held its first hearings on the issue in the autumn of 2001.” (12/12/01)

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba384/

“What then should we conclude about the quality of public education in the United States given the following facts? Public school teachers send their own children to private schools at a rate more than twice the national average–22 percent of public educators’ children are in private schools compared to the national average of 10 percent. In large cities across the United States, more that a quarter of public school teachers’ children are attending private schools–50 percent in Milwaukee, 46 percent in Chicago, 44 percent in New Orleans, 36 percent in Memphis, and 30 percent in Baltimore and San Francisco. In New York City, as of 1988, no member of the Board of Education and no citywide elected official had children enrolled in a public school.” (02/95)

http://tinyurl.com/3dks6x

“Perhaps every one of us might agree that the education of our children is a priority. For that reason, we have entrusted the state to fulfill this need by providing public schooling. But what do we want of a school? Is it to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic? Is it to teach history, philosophy, or logic? Is it to teach foreign languages, world culture, or geography? Is it to teach science, art, and music? Or is it to teach athleticism, computers, or religion? The list of possible subjects could go on because each of us has an opinion on that body of knowledge to which our children should be exposed.” (01/96)

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0196f.asp

“Through the most rigorous studies and my own professional experience I have come to confirm that freedom, in addition to being a human right, constitutes one of the key factors in advancing the notion of educational liberty–a notion that benefits all. In the Catholic perspective, man, by the mystery of the Incarnation, has been elevated to a singular and unique status: man derives his dignity from God. According to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity feeds a moral conscience from which we cannot be separated and which constitutes the surroundings of our every action: in the economy, politics–and even education. Consistent with Ratzinger’s moral reasoning, then, educational freedom in the open society requires limited state power and free markets. Democracy and freedom can hardly exist if the state excessively takes part in the lives and properties of citizens, and education is currently where the interventionism of government and bureaucracy is pronounced with great force–much more than is desirable.”

http://tinyurl.com/36elew

“Parental choice in education is any government policy that enables parents to choose the best schools for their children. In the past, few states had policies or programs to increase educational options for families. In the 1980s, this began to change. Today, 11 states and the District of Columbia have enacted state-funded scholarship programs or tax credits/deductions for education expenses or contributions to scholarship funds; most states have charter or magnet schools; dual enrollment programs are common; and all 50 states allow parents to home school their children.”

http://tinyurl.com/2of782

“In the last 10 years, a nationwide movement has emerged in favor of school choice — the use of market forces to give parents greater control over their children’s education, to improve learning and to control government school costs. The impetus behind that movement is the growing dissatisfaction with government schools, which now control 92 percent of all money spent on elementary and secondary education. A majority of parents are unhappy with those schools. In a 1995 survey, almost six of every 10 parents with children in government schools said they would send them to private schools if they could afford to do so.” (03/98)

http://tinyurl.com/3xohex