No School Choice for You!

Challenge: Make a list of the things the government does well. Probably a short list, right?

But by and large we let the government educate our children. And not only that, we let the government tell us which school will educate our children for us.

Imagine that scenario in any other area of our lives: the government telling me "Sarah, you live in Sector 4. You can only shop at grocery store number 17. You can only go to hospital number 5". There's no way anyone would stand for that, right? But we allow the government to tell us exactly what school our children would go to, with very few acceptable alternatives in place.

Did you know the city of Atlanta spends $11,000 to educate each child in its school system? Take a wild guess at the quality of their schools: crappy. Did you know that for $14,000 per year, a child can attend the most expensive private school in my area? There are many, many great private schools for much less than that.

Hey, here's a wild idea, how about if we give each parent a voucher worth what the government spends on your child and the parent picks the school the child attends? Do you think if there was competition for those dollars, almost instantly the public schools would transform themselves so they could compete with the private schools? Hmmm. If they didn't, they would find new areas of work. If you can't succeed, you should figure out a new plan. Unless you're a bank, an automaker, or can't pay your mortgage.

Now, to my Obama-nation of the day: Obama hates the voucher system. A great article here.
His solution: pouring more money into the failing school system. Sending his daughters to very expensive private schools in Chicago and D.C. (one year at the DC elementary school costs more than my entire law school education). He attacked John McCain's plan to increase the voucher system in the D.C. schools, among the worst of the worst. D.C. schools spend almost $16,000 per pupil and only 12% of 8th graders are proficient in reading. Obama promised to spend $18 billion in federal tax dollars on education.

Great plan Obama. Spend more money. Why would he be opposed to vouchers? Is it because liberals just love big government, and vouchers would remove an important part of the government from the lives of millions of Americans? Is it because if America had a well-educated electorate, he wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in hell of being allowed to take a tour of the White House, much less gotten himself elected? Is it because if Americans had a clue, they would realize conservatism is the way to go? Hmmm.