Why Do Only the Wealthy Have School Choice?

The elementary and secondary public school system remains the only exclusive government monopoly in America. Milton Friedman, a brilliant economist, strongly advocated abolishing the public school system in favor of private education funded through vouchers.

Liberals and the Democrat Party have resisted school choice for decades. The teacher unions (who largely vote Democrat) are one of the largest and most powerful unions in the U.S. They seem more concerned with preserving their monopolistic status and expanding their membership than on what is best for educating our children.

The liberal argument against school choice, whether facilitated through vouchers or through tax credits, can be summed up with three points:

1. Providing vouchers or tax credits to families who send their children to private school amounts to subsidizing private education at the expense of public schools.
2. There is a limited amount of money available to fund education. Our public schools are already squeezed financially and diverting money to school choice vouchers or credits means that less money can be spent for children in public schools.
3. Education is too important to leave to private enterprise.

First, providing vouchers or credits is not subsidizing private education. Not providing vouchers means that families that choose to send their children to non-government schools are paying twice. How is paying twice for your child's education fair? So school choice exists for those who are wealthy enough to afford paying twice. Wealthier families also have far greater mobility to relocate to an area with the best public schools, or where they can afford special bond issues to increase funding. Families with less disposable income are denied these choices. They can only send their children to the government monopoly schools.

Interestingly, a recent court decision mean that children requiring special education can move their child to a school that can best serve him. So the wealthy and special education children have school choice. The middle and lower class majority do not.

Unfortunately, like all monopolies, the government elementary and secondary school system provides results that are mediocre at a very high cost. The average cost per child has soared to more than $9,000 annually for government schools. Private schools on average spend far less than this - more on the order of a little more than $6,000. Success of Catholic schools in producing excellent educational outcomes while spending much less than government schools is well documented. This is especially significant because the demographics of Catholic schools includes a large percentage of lower and middle income students.

Providing 100% funding through vouchers for families to send their children to private schools would save money. The cost of the private schools would be less than educating the student in a government school - and the cost of educating the student in the public school would not be incurred. So if the government monopoly schools were shut down the cost of providing elementary and secondary education to America's children would be reduced by a third.

It turns out that there is a wildly successful model in the U.S. for 100% school choice. Our nation's higher education system of colleges and universities is the envy of the world. Students from all over the world strive to come to the U.S. to take advantage of this educational excellence. Students can choose to apply to any schools they desire. Hillary Clinton's current proposal to provide tax credits to help fund college educations is essentially the same as a voucher or tax credit to enable school choice for a larger number of students.

The requirement that all children of a certain age have to attend school should be retained. If schools choice was implemented in full, what would develop is a range of educational options with different price points and different special offerings. All schools would be accredited and would have to cover a certain core curriculum.

If schools execute poorly and don't meet minimum requirements, they lose their accreditation and eventually get shut down. Government monopoly schools are never shut down. They just continue to fail a new generation of students.

Education is too important to leave it as a government monopoly. The costs are too high and the performance unacceptably low. Providing a constant amount of funding per child for families to choose their schools would create a robust and diverse set of educational options just as our higher education system does today. Wealthy families could still chose to pay more for higher priced educational options. But at least they would not be paying twice. For everyone else a better education with options for all types of students and talents at a lower cost would be achieved.