The Department of Education currently has a $238 Billion Budget. There are currently approximately 55 million K-12 students in the US.
About 50 million attend government schools and about 5 million attend private or parochial schools.
The average annual cost to educate a student in a government run school is $15,000.
The average cost to educate a child in a parochial school $7500, which is half the cost of educating a student in a government school. And the quality of the education provided in parochial schools is far better than government run public schools.
Furthermore, government run schools tie students to their local districts. Government schools are funded by local property taxes. Do kids in the poorest neighborhoods often have the worst run snd lowest funded schools.
Most government run public schools now take their funding for granted and they have come to completely disregard the concerns of the students parents. Instead government Public Schools are run for the teachers and their powerful teachers unions.
The purpose of this policy is to make better and more responsive schools by creating competition to Government run schools - effectively harnessing the power of free markets to improve education. If government schools have to compete with private schools on an even footing they will become more responsive to parents since if they do not parents will be able to take their government voucher and leave the Government run school system. This will result in less revenue for government run schools.
Schools that have to compete for students are more likely to get rid of unpopular policies like sexually grooming children or allowing boys to participate in girls sports.
Competition will also motivate government schools to provide better quality education to their students.
Converting students from government run schools to private or parochial schools will also reduce the taxpayers’ cost for K12 education. If 50% of the country’s K12 students used these vouchers to attend private or parochial schools the taxpayers costs would be less than 50% of current costs. And it would certainly lesd to higher education standards and more responsive schools.
School choice will also allow parents to choose schools that better align with their educational goals. Patriotic Americans can choose schools that teach civics, history and patriotic values. Meanwhile, parents that hate America can still send their kids to public Government School where they can continue to get an America hating education. Or if their local public school provides a patriotic education, they can send their kids to an America hating private school with the voucher.
While $5000 is not enough to cover the entire cost of a private or parochial education. However, there will be scholarships available for children that cannot afford to pay tuition. And for wealth, your families, the cost of a private or parochial school education will be dramatically reduced.
Two groups that will hate this policy will be the teacher’s unions and the Democratic Party, which Receives billions of dollars in contributions from teacher’s unions.
Given the deplorable state of the education provided by so many government run Public Schools it will be difficult for private and public run schools to meet the ensuing demand. But one must look forward and reason back. Once this policy is implemented there will be a lot of Government run public schools who will respond to the competition by improving the education they provide, and by becoming more responsive. This will reduce the demand for public and parochial education by actually improving the government run schools. Furthermore, there are many teachers and administrators currently working for government run public schools who would be delighted to leave their bureaucracy and form new schools so within a year or two the Student capacity of parochial and private schools will be able to increase significantly once this new form of reliable funding becomes available.
The new policy should also allow parents who attend Government public schools to apply for a $1000/student grant for their Government run public school. This will encourage government run public schools to provide better education and be more responsive to their parent population so that “happy parents” will apply for this funding (unhappy parents are unlikely to apply for these grants).
Others have suggested just rerouting the department of education’s budget to the states. But That policy would just bloat the budgets of Government run public schools and the teachers unions that control them.
In order to truly improve education in America, we must provide competition to the current government run public schools. This will improve the options available to our students, and it will force many government run public schools to improve their offering as well.