Voucher Education

The public school system is deteriorating, despite the mounting investment in it. Many children are trapped in bad schools and their parents cannot afford to send them to private school. Everyone should be given the opportunity to choose which school they wish their children to attend if our education system is to improve. It is imperative that we allow substandard schools to close. Shoveling heaps of money into fundamentally unreliable schools is nonsensical. Two things that the public school system does not have and will never have in its current form: competition (internal and external) and responsiveness to the market. These two issues are the main problems with the public school system today. The teacher's unions exploit the problems associated with the lack of competition. Since they have no real competition (private schools cannot be considered real competition the way things are) they have no reason to be innovative and responsive to what the market and the public want. If a voucher program was adopted, these problems would be avoided. 1) Public schools are universally more expensive (per capita) than their parochial and private school counterparts. This should be no surprise considering that most governmental bureaucracies are unproductive and suck up more money than is actually needed. Bearing in mind that private schools receive less money in tuition than the tax-paid funding that state-run schools collect, it's safe to say (as always) that the private sector provides a cheaper and more effective service. 2) You may argue that by establishing this voucher system, many public schools will lose funding that they desperately need. My argument: this is how the free market works. If a school fails to attract students for one reason or another, it must close. Why pump truckloads of tax-payer dollars into a failing school district when you could just as easily distribute vouchers so that students can attend a school of their choosing (the better school). OR! The particular public schools that are losing students to private schools could do a better job (they do receive more money than them after all). If students do leave public schools for private schools, there must be a reason. Oh yeah, private schools are better. Competition's a bitch, ain't it? 3) Market forces. They cause business to fulfill bigger and better things. Without them, business is static, and at times regressive. The same would apply to the school system. The competition increase that comes with the voucher system would encourage innovation and efficiency in schools. School administrations will have to battle to attract students in order to receive funds instead of just sitting back watching the students march into their school. They'll be forced to provide attractive and valuable services in order to stay alive. Perhaps the financial squeeze of the voucher would help clean up the costly teacher union scam. Hm. 4) With competition in full swing, a new and fascinating concept may be enacted in American school systems…variety. Schools will be more inclines to incorporate a kind of specialization in their educational programs and students will begin to notice a diverse range of professional-based schools programs. Academic innovation anybody? 5) Yes, private schools produce better academic results and require less funding than public schools. So why not just go to the private school? Because the average American family cannot afford (or don't see the practicality in paying) both a private school tuition and the fat public school tax.