The inability of public education to adapt along with the demands of union teachers is sending a message to parents across the country. Teaching Students is not the most important part of that equation. They are also discovering that there are options and this bodes ill (ironically) for the Government Monopoly.
Related: LA Teachers Union: Can’t open schools unless charter schools shut down, police defunded, …
The lockdowns and scare tactics are part and parcel of a progressive push to change the political landscape. They believe that prolonged economic destruction will damage President Trump enough to remove him from office in November. But what if it does permanent damage to the way we educate kids in America.
What if the default model of taxing the crap out of everyone to feed the on-size-fits-all state education monopoly suffers a serious or mortal wound because? Has that already happened? And are partisan union antics about returning and hybrid models only going to speed the bleeding?
We can only hope.
Traditional school systems’ failure to adapt to COVID-19 helps explain why many families are turning toward homeschooling. A new nationally representative survey by EdChoice and Morning Consult just found that the pandemic has made families about 2.4 times as likely to have a more favorable view of homeschooling as they are to have a less favorable view. Another national poll, this one by RealClear Opinion Research, found that 40 percent of American families say they are now “more likely” to homeschool after the lockdowns end.
This is starting to look like the sort of momentum needed for a redesign of how K-12 education is funded.
At present large sums of tax dollars are dumped into a system independent of the number of students or the quality of the output. They demand more money every budget season with no regard to any other factor than they deserve more.
Most charter and private schools can do more with less and homeschoolers get significantly better results for a fraction of the government schools.
As the COVID19 agenda plays havoc with people’s lives parents who never considered other options are looking hard at something else. That something else is the flexibility and adaptability of every option other than public school.
Private schools can adapt to change more effectively because they are less hampered down by onerous regulations than their government-run counterparts. Choice schools also have real incentives to provide meaningful educations to their students while reopening safely. Private and charter schools know that their customers—families—can walk away and take their money with them if they fail to meet their needs.
It’s not an unfamiliar formula. And public schools are failing on multiple fronts. They are begging people who price shop for nearly everything else to consider the same thing with K-12 education. And tat’s a problem for the Education Industrial Complex. If a critical mass of residents decide to allow educators to battle for their dollars the way retailers operate to stay in business, the way schools get funded will change.
This debate wouldn’t be so contentious if we funded students instead of school systems. The funding could follow children to wherever their families feel they would receive an effective education, be it a district-run school, a charter school, a private school, or a home setting. In that situation, if an individual school decided not to reopen—or if it reopened unsafely or inadequately—families could take their children’s education dollars elsewhere.
The current monopoly is acting like there are no other choices and it could (please-please-please) lead to a seachange in schooling. A system where education tax dollars are tied to the student not the local education monopoly. In a competitive environment the current cost per student in public schools would drive most parents to other options and by extension either drive down the cost of public education or drive it out of business.
Teachers would have to compete for jobs and pay based on skills and performance and the unions, well, they might not vanish but they’d be wrecked. And without that national power to lean on school boards or politicians, the most innovative zip codes with the best schooling for the money or those that also had the best homeschool organizations or support would also attract more residents.
All that money freed up from the sclerotic shook system would find more productive uses in those local economies. Someone just needs to lead so others can follow.
It would be a seismic shift in learning and productivity, and no, I’m not holding my breath but a guy can dream.
