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She has done a lot of research and makes some good points. But school choice also means opting out of anything federally funded and she seems to miss this.

What her research reaffirms is there is too much federal money in too many things and that those with their hands in the money are enabled to ‘grow’ to think they can push ‘their way’ onto everyone else.

Contrast this waste of money and energy with the home schooling of Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, and even the Wright Brothers:

http://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Wright-Brothers.html

If there is one common denominator driving such people, it is in having someone of influence in the background of disciplined religious pedagogy coupled with random opportunities to ‘educate oneself’. But both those things require things to be read.

The real stuff of education is the ability to decide whether what one is reading is worth reading and to have the sense that one must ‘add’ to the self-selected readings one’s own take on it in some fashion.

So I see she’s put together a lot of bits and pieces but the takeaway for me is her drawing attention to people coming ultimately from federally funded something or other, who should have no business sucking at the federal government teat, but who make it their business to do that better than others.

But she misses honing in in just what ‘School Choice’ means which is the ‘sujet du jour’ with the President-Elect choosing ‘School Choice’ advocate Betsy DeVos.

The federal government has an interest in education but not a constitutional mandate. The problem is the teacher’s unions which are national in scope. No matter how much money these unions suck in, the results are awful and damaging, hence enter the fed gov to make things worse.

I am thankful, for now, that I can bypass all the above for my child.