School
choice for everyone
20 September 2004 - Orange County Register
In
his commentary
on school choice, Mike Tischio attacks vague statistics with
vague questions that say little more than “maybe it’s not due to
X; maybe it’s due to Y instead”.
His
first “maybe” – financial affluence/economic opportunity – is the
one most relevant to the whole situation. It’s a cost/benefit question:
obviously a certain segment of the public sees enough additional
value in private school education to justify spending even more
money over and above their tax burden in order to obtain that education.
How many more parents would spend the money to obtain that education
if they didn’t also have to send tax money to the state for
the schools they don’t use? That, and the improved results that
competition always brings, is the point of school choice.
The
question shouldn’t be, “Why do teachers send their kids to private
school?”, but instead, “Why aren’t more parents able to?”
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