However, I am aware that the growth of literacy is tied totally to the public education movement. And I am not silly enough to believe that most people can pay the costs of private education. When it is a burden for me with an income in the upper 20% how could it be expected that a family with household income less than the median could afford a private education? Those uneducated kids become a burden on society and lower the productivity of the entire society. This is nothing something which would affect just the uneducated individuals. Just as someone running around with the plague don't just affect themselves. There are social consequences of individual choices.
When someone educates themselves s/he also helps society as a whole.
The last stats I recall seeing were that the public school students cost more by about $4000 a head per year to "educate" than private school students. Imagine what that money could be used for if it weren't hemmoraging into the pockets of the fatcats at the top levels of the administration bureaucracy, and financing the creation of the propaganda masquerading as knowledge that is typical fare ("standardized curricula") in public schools today?
Would you at least agree that Federal meddling in public schools should be eliminated? I would find them less objectionable if that were the case; even better if the states butted out as well and let local communities (townships, cities) decide for themselves how to best meet the literacy needs of their citizens.