The Right Remedy for Zanesville's Public Education Crisis (8-29-06)

The time is drawing near to vote on what has become the annual Zanesville public school levy. Expect to hear the same old argument: “It’s for the kids!” 

 

Why do proponents of the levy speak as if only those who don’t give a flip about Zanesville’s kids are against the levy? I’m against the levy because I care about Zanesville’s kids! Who do you think can spend money better and more efficiently for a child’s education, the parents or the bureaucrats? Historically, the more tax money our nation’s public school systems received, the worse the students have performed. The United States spends more money per capita on public education than any other developed country, and yet our children rank at the bottom of the list in science and math.

 

The free market can handle Zanesville’s public education problem much better than bureaucrats with a monopoly on the public treasury. If parents were free – underline, italicize, and embolden that word free – to spend their own money on their own children, would they spend $9243 per child annually to send them to Zanesville’s public schools or $4689 per child annually to send them to a private school? (That’s the actual cost of Zanesville schools compared to the average price of private education in Ohio.) The public education system objects to competition and to a separation of school and state for one reason: they’d get paid only what the parents thought they were worth. 

 

Moreover, if the average Zanesville parent were free to spend their own money on their own child’s education, would they pay for an education that taught their child that they evolved from monkeys, that condoms can make fornication “safe sex,” that homosexuality is normal and to be celebrated, and that morality is relative? And we wonder why our substance abuse and illegitimacy rates are so high in Zanesville! (Of course, not all teachers endorse the dogma of the state-sponsored religion of humanism, but even good teachers are bound by judicial decrees if they want to keep their job.) Even if public schools were as effective and cost-efficient as their private school counterparts, would Zanesville parents pay to have their children taught this folly? 

 

The only way the public education bureaucrats could be so successful at funding their godless education system is by coercive taxation that fines, imprisons, or confiscates the land of those who fail to cough up their hard-earned wealth for something to which they would not give freely. Zanesville’s parents have more love for their children than to willingly subject their children to this un-Christian dogma, and more sense than to willingly pay for the bloated educational system that is twice as expensive as superior private schools. 

 

The good news is that we can vote on the levy and encourage others to vote against it. Support the Alliance to Reform Education Funding at www.StopSchoolLevies.org, and help us reduce taxes and improve the quality and efficiency of public education. “It’s for the kids!”