Replies

Who pays and how? What facilities, what staff, what extracurricular activities?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

( justice pinged as a courtesy)

OK...These are very valid questions.

Facilities:

Please note that I have repeatedly stated that we should **begin** the process of moving toward complete privatization. In fact, we already have by way of vouchers, tax credits, charters, common homeschooling, and early admission to college by homeschoolers.

Who pays and how:

We already have some form or combination of vouchers, charters, and tax credits in nearly all states. We should begin the process there. The infrastructure for this already exists. We should gradually begin to expand this by allowing taxpayers a direct, dollar for dollar, rebate on their property and state taxes if they sponsor any individual child's education, or donate to a private voucher educational foundation that issues private vouchers. Laws already exist to monitor and prosecute fraud for other charities. These same laws would apply to this form of charity as well.

Some states already have experience with tax credits. I don't see any headlines about abuse of this system. I favor tax credits over charters and vouchers because it allows direct control by the person donating to his chosen **private** educational voucher foundation. We already have existing civil rights laws and these should apply to these private education voucher foundation in the same way that they **now** apply to any charity.

Wherever vouchers, tax credits, and charters have opened long, long, long waiting lists have formed. It is heart breaking to watch the children and parents waiting in long lines and listening hopefully for their child's lottery number. Stossel did a wonderful report on the phenomena. Personally, the movie “Waiting for Superman” is already on our family's netflicks list.

Legislatures can meet this pent up demand for private choices, balance their budgets, and lower the number of state employee pensions by gradually increasing the numbers of vouchers, tax credits, and charters.

As we have some experience with the privatization of education, we should gradually expect parents to take over more of their own child's educational expenses. It is amazing to me that parents who now put their child in day care suddenly can't afford to pay for, or contribute to, their own child's education when that child turns 5. As you drive down the road please note the **new** cars being driven. Please note the Mc Mansions on the hill. All of these parents are fully capable of paying for their own children. We should **gradually** expect them to do so.

Private school expenses in my state average about $3,000. My daughter will be sending her children to private school ( her oldest is 4). The tuition for their town's local private school is exactly $3,000, and they welcome children with dyslexia and other educational disabilities.

There are however children who are severely disabled. They are blind, very crippled, deaf, or profoundly retarded. Most of the educational expense for many of these children is **NOT** at all due to their teaching expenses. It is due to their nursing needs while in school and this is really a **medical** expense.

I suggest that all children be offered ( privately or through the government) a health insurance policy that insures against catastrophic educational disability and would cover the **medical** and **nursing** needs these children need in an educational setting. It would cover translators and signers, hearing aides, health care workers to assist with feeding and sanitary needs, wheelchairs, special glasses, seeing eye dogs, special computers, R.N.s to supervise medicine, Help with feeding, etc.

Any child should be allowed to take the GED, or similar private exam, at any age and then be fully eligible for all private and government scholarship aide and admission to college like any other student. Homeschoolers have PROVEN without a doubt that children can and **DO** thrive in college at young ages. Two of my homeschooled children earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of **18**. They are NOT unusual. The next time you see a headline about a Westinghouse science winner, please remember that this child could and **should** already be finished an undergraduate degree and be in graduate school.

It appalling to me that so many very bright children are languishing in stupid high school programs when they could already be working on graduate degrees.

Having the programs that allow very bright children to progress into formal college and graduate school setting would be a **tremendous** saving to the taxpayer and be of great great benefit to the child, if the parents feel this is best educational path for their child. Again we have **tons** of experience with this from homeschoolers.

By the way....Every year our state legislature has a bill before it that would allow any child of any age to take the GED. Every year the teachers unions lobby like crazy to see that it is defeated.

Finally, homeschoolers have proven that it is completely and **commonly** possible to educate children on **literally** pennies a day. REALLY! With today's technology and free Internet sources the cost of giving a child an outstanding education is even **far** less than it cost to homeschool my children ( who are now adults).

We could and should be able to give children an outstanding education through today's technology on literally pennies a day on curriculum **if** we would abandon the idea that all children must be educated in prison-like, Prussian military modeled, brick and mortar buildings.

Facilities:

Tax credits, vouchers, and charters will help build the infrastructure needed to eventually move to a completely private system. As it is now, there are NO private choices open to parents ( such as in my county). The government is running a price-fixed cartel and is giving its product away for free. What rational business person is going to compete against a cartel like that?

We already see that in states with vouchers, charters, and tax credits that private business people will and do open highly successful privately owned and managed schools. This is how we build the infrastructure needed for complete privatization.

In Los Angeles the teachers of one government high school voted to become a Red Dot charter school. All teachers should be allowed to vote whether or not their government school becomes an independent charter school.

In my state homeschoolers are flat out forbidden to educate any other child except their own. This needs to stop. If a parent respects a trusted homeschooling family that they know, then that parent has the fundamental human right to have that homeschooling mom and dad educate their child, if the homeschooling family agrees to accept their child into their family circle.

Again...Regarding facilities,....With privatization I predict we will see abandonment of the brick and mortar, prison-like schools. We will, see education settings that our Founding Fathers enjoyed. There will be one room schools in the homes of neighbors, private tutoring centers, small schools in the local Lions Clubs, and churches. Homeschooling families in taking in one or two of the children of friends and neighbors...etc.

When our Founding Fathers urged universal education, what they had in mind was likely the education they enjoyed. They would be appalled and horrified if they could see how we mistreat children in our modern prison-like government schools.

Extracurricular:

Another way to help privatize the system is to move all sports, theater, arts, dance, cheer leading, banner waving teams, and special interest clubs (etc.) to the county departments of recreation. Please remember that the former government schools would still have excellent county facilities for training but that training would now be a county recreation responsibility.

Next, the health, safety, and fire requirements for those parents choosing one room schools, or other homeschooling families, for their children should be similar to those for our existing day care. If a home or day care center is safe enough for for infant, pre-school, before school, and after-school child care, it is safe enough for one-room schooling.

Existing day care facilities should be permitted to become charter, voucher, or tax credit schools. They could begin by adding kindergarten, and first, second, and third grade. These facilities already exist and they are already providing before and after school care. Why not allow the day care facility to hire a teacher(s), allow the child to remain at the day care facility, and continue their schooling there? It would be so much less disruptive to the child to remain in the care and supervision of their trusted day care providers.

Staff:

States already have voucher, tax credit, and charter schools. Unlike government schooling, we don't have daily stories about neglect or abuse occurring in these schools. We don't see daily stories about abusive day care centers ( except for the notorious cases where the government prosecutors **invented** crimes to promote their political careers). The standards of safety for hiring of staff should continue to be the same for those that we have for existing day care, voucher, tax credit, charter schools, and private schools.

We have had centuries long experience with existing private schooling. If parents are, today, capable of choosing a private schools with teachers they deem professionally qualified, then they should be fully capable of choosing a voucher, tax credits, or charter schools along with their staff. The requirements for teachers should be no more onerous than that which currently exists for private schools today and has existed for a few centuries in the U.S.

Who pays and how:

The Department of Education on the federal level should be completely and utterly abolished! All responsibility for supervision of K-12 education ( and college level education) should be returned to the states.

At first the taxpayer would fund the tax credits, vouchers, and charters. Gradually we would expect parents to take on more responsibility of paying for their own child's education. If they can afford and expensive new car or a house with more than 2,000 feet, they **CAN** afford to contribute significantly to their child's education.

In an ideal world, all education would be privately funded with charities paying for the poorest. Is it possible to meet this libertarian ideal? Probably not. But...We could make significant steps in this direction.

We spend **more** on K-12 education alone ( federal, state, and local) than we do on the military. Really we do! These costs are crushing our economy and business and property taxes going to fund our prison-like government schools are pushing industry off shore. Tremendous amounts of capital are utterly unavailable because it is being sucked up a greedy educational-industrial complex. Worse, though, is that our children are confined to prison-like structures that have all the social pathology found in real prisons.

( Not proof read. I have an eye exam scheduled and I am in a hurry.)