The New Hampshire Union Leader advocates a couple of pro school choice bills. The first will cause the state to not funnel money for charter schools through the local school board. Instead charter schools will just be funded by the state. Apparently a local school board froze funds for a charter school in their district. This is a bit of a conflict of interest item for a local school board, at least if that local school board doesn't believe in charter schools. I would probably leave the funding in the hands of the local school board and let the local electorate sort out who they want on the school board.
The second bill would start a rather limited voucher program for low-income families. I would rather swing for the fences and provide vouchers for all families, but this is a good first step (especially since I know very little about the specifics of NH politics).
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Often I have seen it argued by those who are employed by the government education system (and to the purely ignorant) that those of us who are critical of the system should simply exercise choice and pick a charter school or a private school. Choice, they say, is readily apparent and they don't understand when people continuously argue for choice in education. So, for clarity I would once and for all like to set the record straight.
The fact of the matter is that in Wisconsin we have choices but we do not have real choice? While that may sound a bit convoluted, it is nevertheless true -let me explain. As a parent I can exercise my right to send my daughter to any school I choose, the overriding state requirement is that education is compulsory and we are allowed to home school, or send our kids to non public alternatives. Therefore we have some choices as to where we send our children for the education that the state has mandated take place. But choices and real choice are not the same thing.
As a taxpayer, I am compelled by the threat of conversion to pay real property taxes. As one who purchases other items and has earned income in the State of Wisconsin, I also pay sales tax and income tax. Each of these taxes are sources of revenue for the state and are used to fund the government schools; not a dime goes to fund home schooling, private or parochial schools. In fact, 100% of all income taxes collected go to fund K-12 education in Wisconsin (plus roughly 40% of property taxes). Therein lies the lack of true choice, more accurately described as real economic choice. For all intents and purposes, in a market economy, real economic choice or, simply, choice are synonymous.
The issue then is as follows - as a parent raising a child it is my solemn duty, responsibility and, in fact, pure joy to provide protection and to see to the training of the mind of my child so that she can become an independent, rational, self-reliant person. This is not the exception, it is the vast rule among the vast majority of parents - there are relatively few who shirk this solemn duty. If I choose to send her to the local government school for this mind training, I fully expect to pay for it and I do - via the taxes already mentioned. However, if I make an independent decision as a parent that what is in my daughter's best interest is not attendance at Government Elementary, but rather Parochial School, I am exercising my parental rights and making a choice. Furthermore, I have to pay tuition at Parochial to exercise this state authorized choice because they do not receive funds from anywhere else. So, I have exercised my right granted to me by the state to send my daughter to a non-public school, however I have been denied the economic right to close the deal because I am still required to subsidize the education of other peoples children who attend the school that I deemed inappropriate for educating my child! I am being denied the economic right of choice by the state.
This denial occurs because economic choice implies voting with dollars between competing choices - if you buy a hamburger at McDonald's but are required by law to also buy one from Hardees have you really made a choice? The fact that the state requires me to pay twice by not crediting to me the amount I have paid in tuition to exercise my parental rights over where my daughter is educated is simply and purely immoral. While I am educating my child, I have no obligation, duty or any other moral requirement to simultaneously pay for someone elses child to be educated! Unless, of course, I should choose to be truly benevolent. Moreover, when I am done educating my child my taxes will remain and I will continue to subsidize public education. The irony is glaring, by creating the socialist/altruist mentality that permeates the government schools they have removed from us the ability to engage in true benevolence.
Economic choice is the foundation of our market economy. Private property is the storehouse of a citizens individual wealth, their only means of attaining real independence in a democracy. By expropriating capital with the threat of conversion of ones private property, the state has undertaken a direct attack upon capitalism and free markets. To fund government controlled and mandated education with the proceeds thereof with no consideration for the economic reality of the rights of parents to educate there progeny as they believe best is a direct frontal attack on individual freedom and liberty - the essential foundation and philosophical basis to which our Founding Fathers looked in creating this great country. The state might as well deny me the right of choices as well. This is, in reality for many parents, exactly what happens because only the wealthiest among us can afford to pay twice.
Real economic educational choice is more than a tag line, it is more than a griping point, it is not a ploy by rich people to keep more of their money. It is one of the most fundamental issues we face in this country because it portends a future that implies either a socialist state or a truly free society. Those of us who argue vociferously for economic educational choice are on the right side of history and stand hand in hand with Adams, Jefferson, Paine, Henry, Lee and Washington.
Who do you stand with?
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