Keep the Government out of my Homeschool

When George W. Bush was campaigning in Iowa he appeared (if it is indeed possible to appear on a radio show) on a local radio show in Des Moines called Mickelson in the Morning. The host Jan Mickelson is a libertarian-leaning conservative. Mickelson had asked then candidate Bush two questions:

The first as I recall was about Court nominees. Bush answered that he would appoint only strict constructionists to the Bench. So far so good. For his second question , Mickelson asked about how Bush would like to be remembered should he become president. President Bush answered that he would like to be known as the Education President.

As Mickelson said, the two answers were incompatible. How can one support a strict constructionist view of the Constitution and believe in increasing the federal role in education?

Today my good friend Scott has a link to a blog  refuting the points made on the National Education Association's (NEA)  site against school vouchers. Scott is a conservative and a deep-thinker so it is with some trepidation that I find myself opposite Scott and siding, albeit for different reasons, with the NEA.

As a parent with children currently in homeschool, public school and private (Christian) school — I strongly oppose school vouchers.

The idea behind vouchers is to give parents a choice in how their children are educated. Combined with real concerns about the quality and content of public education vouchers are also seen as a way to bring competition into the public schools. The thinking goes like this, if parents are empowered to choose the schools their children attend they will choose the best schools. If the best schools are private schools, they and their money, in the form of vouchers, will go to private schools. Therefore in order to prevent the drain of students and money, public schools will have incentive to  provide a quality education.

Here are the issues I have with vouchers:

 

1.	Parents already have choices.
	This is still a free country. Parents may send their children to any private or parochial school they wish. (Unfortunately most open enrollment rules do not allow the same choice in public schools.) Many would argue that since private schools are expensive poor parents don't really have a choice. Therefore the government should provide them with the means to make the choice. The choice to send your children to parochial, private or homeschool is not to be undertaken lightly. These are intensely personal choices and unless one is independently wealthy they are expensive choices. But so many choices in a free society do require sacrifice. I have a right to live anywhere I want to. But having the right and the freedom doesn't mean I can just pick out a mansion overlooking the ocean and move in. It takes work and sacrifice but I can aspire to  live in that mansion someday and that's the American dream. To reach and to aspire knowing that it is possible. I do not need the government to give me what I ought to earn.
2.	Vouchers are a form of money laundering.
	There is no such thing as government money — the government gives nothing that it has not first taken away. Vouchers are a way of taking money away from the states, sending it to Washington and then returning a portion of it back. Vouchers are just a means of giving you permission to spend your own money — if my friends and I had come up with the idea, we would be prosecuted under the RICO statutes. The real problem is that so much of our money goes to Washington in the first place. If Washington didn't tale so much, we would not be begging them to give it back.
3.	Vouchers increase the role of the federal government in education.
	There was a time when conservatives wanted to reduce the size of the federal government. Vouchers are simply a way of using our own money to enslave us. The more dependent we become on the federal government for education, the more local control we give up. In the long run vouchers will give parents less control over education in their communities. President Bush wants to be the Education President, as a Bush supporter I wish he would be the president who returned education to the states.
4.	Schools belong to the community.
	As a parochial school and homeschool parent the argument I hear most often is that parents (like myself) are paying twice for the schools. Once through our taxes (property taxes in my state) for schools we do not participate in. And then once again through tuition and homeschool expenses. While this is true on the surface, parents do not pay for the public schools. Let me repeat that, parents do not pay for the public schools. The public schools are funded by the community (at least where I live). Whether you are a business owner with a large family, a retired person with no school-age children or  a single mother living in an apartment. You pay for the schools. The schools are not directly paid for by parents. By this reasoning anyone in the community who does not have a child in the public schools should be able to opt out of  their school taxes. But the fact is that we as a community have decided to fund public education. For better or worse, we have built this system and there is no immediate exit strategy.  Unless we come up with an alternative to the public schools, vouchers are counter-productive. We have had public schools for so long it would not be possible to abolish them today. We have the system we have, we need to support it as best we can.
5.	Vouchers will ruin non-government schools.
	Finally, I oppose vouchers because as a parent, I am deeply concerned about my private school and homeschool. I have chosen parochial school and home school because they provided opportunities for my children (at a specific time) that they would not get in the public school. One of the things that make private school and homeschool special is that they are largely free of the tentacles of government control. Where government money goes, government control follows. It is inevitable, that government strings follow. By accepting money from the government, schools will likely subject them self to government restrictions. The government will control whom a school may hire, what a school may teach, what materials may be used in class and even whether religion can be a part of the curriculum. One of the things that makes private school, parochial school and homeschool attractive is the fact that they are not under control of the government. I ran for my local school board because I support and believe in public education. All of my kids have been in public school for part of their education. All of my kids have also been home-schooled and several have been in private school.

Parents already have choices, any parent can send their child to private school or choose to homeschool. Parents do not need the government to tell them how to spend their money.  Parents should have control over the education of their students, not the government. The community needs to support strong public schools and not hinder vibrant private schools and homeschool options. Private and home schools need to be kept free of the tentacles of federal government control.  I feel so strongly about school choice that I want to preserve the schooling choices available to students and their parents.

Keep the government out of my private school, keep the government out of my Christan school and keep the government out of my homeschool.