The self-defeating arguments against parent empowerment
Written By: Robert Pratt
It’s like those congregants who wrongly confuse a building as being the Church.
Confusing buildings, organizations, and traditions with being the essence of public education gets it wrong. In reality, public education is simply a public political commitment to provide schooling to all children without regard to each family’s ability to pay, and funding such by taxing all—including those not directly consuming the education. There is nothing in that commitment that requires the use of any particular model of delivery of schooling.
How is “public education” diminished by using public funds to send students to schools formed and operated outside of the government service delivery model? Put another way: How is letting parents send their children to any type of school (government, private, for-profit, not-for-profit, religious, or secular) an abandonment of public education as long as such choice is open to all the public and paid for by the public?