Educational Freedom
In September, the Heritage Foundation released its Education Freedom Report Card. Florida received the top rating for educational freedom, followed by Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, and South Dakota. The District of Columbia was ranked last for educational freedom, with New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts joining D.C. at the bottom of the rankings.
Heritage used four criteria in its evaluation:
- Educational choice—this metric includes educational savings accounts
- Regulatory freedom—this metric includes the requirements to become a teacher
- Transparency—the ease with which parents can know what their children are being taught
- Return on investment for educational spending—this metric compared test results to the dollars spent
Certainly, more educational choices for parents is a good thing, but having more choices isn’t the same as being free. Government remains involved in virtually every “school choice” policy. Government, not parents, students, and school officials, is ultimately in control.
Freedom means an absence of government coercion. Educational freedom means an absence of government coercion in regard to education. Yet, in one way or another, nearly every “school choice” policy includes government coercion. As one example, school vouchers are funded by coercively attained tax dollars. Taxpayers, including non-parents, are forced to subsidize the education of the children of others.
We should certainly support efforts to return freedom to parents through vouchers and similar “school choice” policies. But if we truly want to provide our children with a quality education, we must restore complete educational freedom. And that means abolishing government schools.
More than a dozen years ago, in my book Individual Rights and Government Wrongs, I wrote,
Today, education is a virtual monopoly of the government. While home schooling and private schools have grown in popularity in recent decades, government schools remain the dominant source of education for most American children. Indeed, approximately 85 percent of America’s schoolchildren attend government schools, primarily because these schools are “free.” Of course, these schools are not free. Their costs are borne by you and other taxpayers, which includes parents and non-parents alike.
Click here to download the entire chapter on education in my book for free.