Give parents school choice

Public schools should be accountable to parents rather than to the government.

By David Holcberg
February 19, 2008

» Discuss Article (8 Comments)

Lisa Snell and David Tokofsky briefly touched on the issue of school vouchers in their Dust-Up on problems facing the Los Angeles Unified School District. In all the controversy over how to improve education in America's failing public schools, one thing seems to be missing: the idea that schools and teachers should be accountable to parents, not to the government.

If politicians are concerned with raising achievement among children currently enrolled in government schools, one important thing they can do is to give parents the option to enroll their children in a private school of their choice. This can be done, for example, by giving parents tax credits to be spent on their children's education. The tax credits could be equivalent to what the government spends per student in its schools.

With tax credits in hand, parents would be able to shop around for the best private schools. They would be able to get their kids out of failing government schools and into schools they believe would give their children a much better education.

If parents later find that their choice of school was mistaken, they would still be able to try other schools. This freedom of choice would not guarantee a good education for their children (even private schools can do a poor job) but at least it would give parents control and put pressure on government schools to improve the quality of the education they provide.

Government schools that failed to improve would likely lose their students — and justly so.

If any politician really wants to improve the education of students currently attending government schools, he can start by doing a simple thing: Set their parents free.

David Holcberg is a media specialist at the Ayn Rand Institute.

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1. In the 1950s, governments locked children who were the wrong race out of schools. Now, governments want to lock children inside schools that are failing. Let's end the government monopoly on schools that leads to such absurd, dangerous results. They way to accomplish that is through tax credits, for individuals and businesses, that take money and power away from governments and give it to parents.
Submitted by: Jim Manley
1:25 PM PST, Feb 27, 2008

2. If only we could make parents accountable to the schools. You keep your child up late and he falls asleep in class? We get to force you to take parenting classes. Keep them out of school to translate for you, watch their younger siblings because they're sick and you have to go to work. Ditto. Kids who's parents value education, do well in ANY school. Kids whose parents see school as free baby sitting or a place where someone ELSE will fix the problems THEY'VE caused through poor or neglectful parenting have kids who aren't achieving. Want to know why the child doesn't achieve? Try looking at the parents FIRST!
Submitted by: Kim T.
5:31 PM PST, Feb 20, 2008

3. Lance, The goal is not to make all students equally stupid or have a "level playing field" by which to compare public to private. The goal is justice for the students and their parents who pay for their education which means allowing them to spend their money on the school they believe does the best job. Ultimately, public education should be phased out altogether and taxpayers should get their money back and education should be purchased as a service like any other.
Submitted by: Doug
3:48 PM PST, Feb 20, 2008

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