On Euthanizing Public Education

A couple of years ago, I supported school vouchers. I thought "hey, why don't we get our local, state, and federal governments to give vouchers equal to the average education cost to parents. The parents can then use the voucher to go to private school." Since then, I've realized that any such program would be a de-facto socialization of all private schools in the country; the government would only allow vouchers to go to pre-approved schools with pre-approved curriculum; in order to capture the multi-billion-dollar windfall, private schools would conform to government guidelines, perhaps even unionizing in some states.

Today, I believe that the only real way to reform education is through tax credits -- tax credits for pulling your kids out of school.

This can be best accomplished by simply dividing up the Department of Education's annual budget among all K-12 schoolchildren who are not enrolled in public school. With about 6.5 million K-12ers either in private school or homeschool, the $65-billion dollar Dept. of Education Budget would give a $10,000 tax credit to parents for each student in the first year. Millions of Americans would pull their children out of public school in year two in order to get a piece of the tax credit money. If the number of K-12ers outside of public school increased 20% every year, the tax credit would decrease from $10,000 in year one, to $8,300 in year two, to $7,000 in year three, to $5,800 in year four, $4,800 in year five, to $4,000 in year six, etc. With a 20% annual increase in the number of K-12ers out of public school, there would be about 16.5 million K-12s out of public school after year 6, about 2 and a half times as many as there were before and about 1/3rd of all K-12 students. 1/3rd of our children would be freed from the government indoctrination and daycare centers, instead getting a real education.

With a 20% drop in the number of students enrolled in public school, state and local governments should be able to carve out their own tax credits to leave the public school system. If the level of education spending dropped in proportion to the number of students who left the system, the ~$500 billion a year state and local governments spend on education should drop to about $400 billion a year. With the $100 billion-dollars in savings, state and local governments could offer and additional $6,000 in tax credits to parents for pulling their students out of public schools. If parents flock to the tax credit like they did before (with 20% increases every year), over 2/3rds of K-12ers would be out of public school within five years.

At this point, only half of the remaining $400 billion in savings is being used. The State and local governments can then offer a $200 billion-dollar tax credit and cut the rest.

All students will be on a tax credit of about $6,600, and taxpayers will save $200 billion dollars a year.