When the government takes over education, so does the ideology of the people in government. Parents across the country are making the move to pull their kids out of public schools. (Sidebar: I’m going to call them government schools because public is a misnomer: I can’t just walk into a classroom at a government school – I’d be arrested.)
Why? We are supposed to have the best education system in the world by far. Partly, from the response to the pandemic- parents are either concerned for the safety of their kids or disgusted at the slow re-opening. But mostly in response to the errors that have been made in funding the schools and the ideology that has found its way into classrooms around the country. This “social justice warrior” learning material is meant to turn our kids into walking Marxists.
Often, well-meaning people push for more funding for government schools, saying that our schools are “underfunded” when in reality that is not the case. Let’s take the Hamilton County schools as an example. We give them over one-third of our budget each year, with 1-2 percent planned increases per school/fiscal year. If we truly were to take that suggestion and raise the budget by 10-15 percent (that’s just based on many views, not really on one specific suggestion) then that would not only eat up another large percentage of our budget, it would raise taxes for many people. Charter schools are simply a better, and as many Libertarians say – “Taxation is Theft”.
Recently, one of my friends, who lives in Southlake, Texas was telling me that a progressive group was trying to implement a microaggression policy whereby things such as facial expressions and body language could be interpreted as racist or homophobic and the student could be suspended. This is just one example of many such policies that come along that cause parents to become disgusted with their child’s education and decide to either send them to private schools or homeschool them. Not only are data scores better, so is the experience.
But even discounting money, the data we have from the past 25 years shows that the more school funding increases we give, the lower test scores are. (Now granted, we shouldn’t think of kids as test scores in general, but for the sake of argument, let’s keep it that way for now.) Why? My theory is that as school budgets increase, so does expenses. Administrators say “Oh, we have and extra $12 million this year, let’s build a new playground!” But really, the desks need replacing, supplies are low, and teachers are long overdue for a raise. The actual problems are overlooked, and people see the need for more funding, and they ask for an increase and so the vicious cycle repeats itself. The funding allocation has to be watched very carefully and then maybe we can think about decreasing the funding for government schools and phasing them out.
These are just some of the issues that I have with our current government school system. I believe that we need to do away with government schools altogether and replace them with charter schools and private schools or, in some cases, homeschooling. I was homeschooled for many years and saw the great effects that it had on me. Socially, I was ready for bigger and better things than my middle school colleagues. Physically, I was feeling the best ever and mentally, I was in the best place possible. Homeschooling is a great option for some, but charter schools also have been proven to be better for students. This is because the learning is more personalized and centered on understanding the concept instead of simply “teaching to the test”. So really, school choice is the best choice.
William Reynolds