Back to Letters Home  

 

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?”

HTML & original content © 2004, 2005 Jason Trippet