New York City is spending about $10,000 per student on education. The results aren’t good enough. The dropout rates are too high, the test scores are too low, and there are too many discipline problems in the schools.
I’m a parent of a pre-school age child. When my child becomes old enough to go to school, I don’t want her to go to the public schools. I want the government to give me the $10,000 and I will use it home-school or to pay private-school tuition.
I’m not "blaming teachers" or "blaming administrators". I just think that I, as a parent, can do better for my daughter than the Government can.
I am a great believer in Publicly-Funded Education. But I think that we Progressives have become confused. We often equate "Publicly-funded Education" with "Publicly-controlled, Publicly-managed/run Education".
We need to have the government fund education. Rich families should be taxed to pay for the education of poor children.
But there’s no Progressive purpose in having the government actually run the educational system. The government gives food stamps to hungry people, but does not actually operate farms. Why should politicians operate schools?
We should have an education tax. Rich people should pay more and poor people should pay less. Then we should take the money and hand out Vouchers (yes, I said the V-word). Rich kids will get small vouchers and poor kids get large ones. Parents can then decide which schools their kids will attend. Anybody who likes the Public School can stay, of course.
The wacko Right, especially the mullahs and astrologers who believe in "the Free-Market", have given vouchers a bad name. This is because they try to use them as a tool to cut the total funding level for education. We have to guard against this when we implement Progressive Vouchers.
This is an important issue for the Democratic Party. We are so very close to locking in a long-term national majority. By returning the education decision-making authority to parents, we can win them back from the belief that their kids are "trapped" in bad schools just because they live in a poor community.
Publicly-funded education helps class mobility, helps promote equality, and is a critical component of the Progressive agenda. Publicly-run education, not so much.
It’s time for Progressives to face the facts about our Public Schools. They currently just aren’t good enough for this country. We must put forward a Progressive solution, if we wish to prove that we can govern.