School plan not a free-market solution

tate Sen. Kyle Loveless (Point of View, Jan. 15) and many others have long touted a voucher system to increase competition in K-12 education, with the argument that it will allow parents to take their government school money wherever they choose. However, the common denominator of our public education system from from Guymon to Idabel is that it runs on taxpayer dollars and is overseen by the politicians and bureaucrats at NE 23 and Lincoln as well as those in Washington.

Government vouchers will come with those same strings attached. The very thing that makes private schools and homeschooling a meaningful alternative to public education is the much greater degree of independence from political control.

Any sort of voucher or education savings account program funded by tax dollars will result in the education institutions on the receiving end being required to adhere to the dictates of politicians. Parents who now pay out of pocket for their children to have a faithbased educational experience would not be better off with vouchers that would require their church school to obey First Amendment proscriptions against establishment of religion. Requiring a homeschooling family to undergo inspections and endure testing in order to receive their government payout not only would be onerous but might as a practical matter dramatically reduce the number of families that choose the do-it-yourself option.

If we believe in promoting innovation, efficiency and even competition in education we should, rather than making alternatives to the public school less different, allow our public schools to be more different.

Putting all of our education options into the same state government basket seems less likely to foster competition and more likely to produce for parents a choice of public, private or home schools that are marked by their uniformity rather than diversity.

If we believe in promoting innovation, efficiency and even competition in education we should, rather than making alternatives to the public school less different, allow our public schools to be more different. Let’s push power over our local schools away from the state Capitol (and the District of Columbia when possible) and down to our local school boards. These officials are elected by the people, just as the 149 members of the state Legislature are, and have the advantage of living in the same community with and knowing many if not most of the teachers and students in the schools over which they preside.

The only problem is that would require politicians to give up some power, and as we can see from demands for everything from vouchers to tax hikes, politicians only want their power to increase.