Now, Sangha. You know you my boy. You've been one of my favorites since day one. I'm gonna call bull**** on this, though. Most parents can't choose to send their children to private school because the cost is prohibitive to do so. And sure, if you meet income qualifications, you can go for free, but most people who really care about this won't meet the income qualifications. I know that I wouldn't. Most private schools in our area are around $1,000 a month. That's a mortgage payment and a car payment. In this economy, people are struggling to make their house payments, to eat, to pay the electric bill. Asking them to pay $1,000 a month for tuition is something that most can't do, and that doesn't mean they have a choice. If the private schools were tuition-free, and the parents still left their kids in public schools, then I'd agree. Right now the cost of the tuition is taking the choice out of most parents' hands.
Don't worry, no offense taken. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
And yes, it is true that most people can afford to send their child to private school, but that doesn't mean that they do not have the "right to choose" to send their child to private school. They retain that right; they just do not have the means to exercise that right.
And, to be honest, for the most part, I really don't care about most of those who can't afford to send their child to private school, mainly because I don't buy the nonsense about how crappy our public schools are. In my opinion, the overwhelming majority of public schools are pretty good and they're getting better. The problem is with a small minority of schools which are beset with a variety of ills, the most important of which is the poverty of their students. These are not the schools the children of the people posting here are sending their children too. If they were, I would suggest they make better choices (like cancelling their internet connection and saving the money to pay tuition) before complaining about how they lack choices.
For those parents who truly lack a choice (due to their poverty) and are "forced" to send their child to a school that is truly crappy, the idea that allowing people to opt out of paying taxes to fund public schools is a viable remedy to this problem of crappy schools seem counter-intuitive. It's only purpose is to further weaken the govt, and it's motivation is primarily fed by hostility to government, and aid for the poor. It has little or nothing to do with bettering our public school system, and the arguments used to support such an idea are rarely supported by facts.
Which is not to say that there aren't problems with the public system, or that crappy schools don't exist. However, the problem has nothing to do with being able to choose to not pay taxes, or being able to choose which school your child goes to. Instead, the problem is caused by several factors, including and not limited to "de facto" segregation (as opposed to "de jure") in housing, the poverty of children (1 in 5, according to some estimates I've read), a host of cultural problems associated with poverty, and (most relevant to this tangent we're discussing) an unwillingness of many to properly fund anything helps the poor.
So when that choice is "taken out of the hands" of parents, it's usually parents who are somewhere in the middle class, and their child ends up going to a school that is pretty good (relative to other schools, both in this country and in others). Schools where their children are more than able to get a fine education so long as the child puts the effort into it. Sure, it's not the *best* school (and I certainly don't begrudge parents for wanting their children to go to the best school) but no one has the right to "the best"
We all pay our taxes. In exchange, we deserve to have our children receive an adequate education. If we're going to expect that every child is entitled to the best, then we're going to have to pay for it.
