Public education is not free

Many people think that public education is free. In fact, it's no more free than the Ipod nano you get with the $3,000 Imac powerbook plus; you just pay for it indirectly. The average Hoosier students gets about $10,000 a year for schooling over a period of 12 years. He'll pay that back at a rate of $2,400 a year for the rest of his life. Really it's not too bad a deal. Basically, you get the funds at a time when you can least afford it and the government assumes all the risk for defaulting if you happen to be a major screw up. Of course, from an individual perspective, how much you get and how much you pay is enormously complicated. And the deal changes every year but roughly it works to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, which isn't entirely bad either.

The determination of who gets what money from where is always highly contested. Politicians will debate the merits dollars here versus there until the end of time. While the pennys shifted from year to year is somewhat important, the real issue for me is that students are required to use all their education funding at a state sponsored school and under very limited circumstances can they purchase extra services. The justifications for this are that it provides some measure of fairness to the system, which is doesn't, and that it gives economic benefits from the economies of scale, which is only partially true. It does cost less to run one big school instead of several smaller outfits, but the loss of value to the students seems to outpace the savings in cost. But the real issue is with the unintended consequences.

90% of students in the US attend public school. This makes sense; one would want to avoid paying for his education twice where possible. If you're wealthy what you do is congregate among other wealthy people. By living in wealthy suburbs with little "affordable" housing you can ensure that the majority of students that attend your child's school will be of your ilk. You will end up paying a little more for school taxes, but you'll get a much better value out of it. Thus there is little market for private education in those areas.

You tend to see the greatest market for private education in urban areas. There, the tax burden for education is relatively low and the public schools tend to be a lot less acceptable to wealthy patrons. You may be a stalwart committed to urban revival, but you still aren't willing to sacrifice your child's future to make a political point. Madison is an interesting case, though I doubt it's unique. You have a small to midsize town with a lower middle class population and many poor in the surrounding areas. The public school is mediocre. While it may be "rougher" than Shawe, it's by no means abysmal. On the demand side of things, the population has a few wealthy people who would want better, enough to populate Shawe. Still, many of the better off can tolerate the environment at the Public school instead of forking over extra money for private education.

The religious question is almost a discertation in and of itself. The archdiocese is pretty much a vestige of a bygone era. It came about as a reaction to the anti-immigrant sentiment of the 19th century. Basically, the public schools were all protestant and the immigrants from Europe wanted to have Catholic schools of their own instead of sending their kids to the Protestant schools. But the Nativists basically told them where to shove it, so they created the Archdiocese. It was hard to compete because it always lacked the funding of the 'public' school system, but eventually the public school system became secular and varied in its own right, so the point became moot. Now people generally consider religion to be a private concern and they're fine if it doesn't officially mix with their schooling. But that could change if they privatize education.

While poor students clearly suffer the most from this system, teachers are not far behind. If you want to teach, you have to go to the state franchise school to do it, and you have to teach the way they want you to and you have to accept what they think is a fair wage. If you live in Madison or North Vernon this is particularly restrictive as there isn't even much of a choice of buildings to work in. I understand that Jane Struck had some falling out with her Principal or the other teachers at Jenning's county High school. I don't know the details, but apparently she can no longer teach there. And since there's no way to start a 'private practice' she's pretty much blocked out of the profession. Imagine you are an engineer and the government has some bizzare set up that makes it so that there's only one engineering firm in town and they run it. If you had a falling out with that group you're left with two choices: move to a different town, possibly giving up contact with friends and family, or give up your career as an engineer for which you have invested a lot of training and experience. It's not a good lot for teachers. I'm sure this is no small part of the reason it's difficult to attract talented people to the field.

So here's the real question: What would happen if folks weren't required to spend their education money at the state franchise school? What opportunities would that open up for students? For teachers? For the wealthy who are seeking highly tailored services for their children? For the poor who just want schools that are interested in their children? What kind of opportunities would you look for?