Parents continue to seek innovative education options outside government-run schools, using education savings accounts.
by Eileen Griffin
Alternative educational environments may be more likely to innovate while government-run schools remain mired in regulation.
Studies show that government-run schools continue to be constrained by many laws, rules and regulations they are required to follow, the American Institute for Economic Research reports.
Charter schools are allowed to operate without the heavy regulatory burden, but despite this freedom, few have made significant changes from traditional models.
Research indicates that Charter Schools have not innovated as much as anticipated. They also have not been successful in challenging government-run schools to improve their performance.
“Public school funding is generally tied to enrollment,” writes Angela Dills, the Gimelstob-Landry Distinguished Professor of Regional Economic Development at Western Carolina University. “If public schools struggle to retain their residentially assigned families, they may work harder to offer the quality and services that parents prefer for their children. And an analysis of the empirical evidence suggests that this does happen.”
When tax dollars fund students, rather than school systems, allowing parents to choose a private school using education savings accounts, the loss of revenue for government-run schools motivates educators to improve.
“Education entrepreneurs and parents are working to find educational options for children outside of the highly regulated traditional public schools,” Dill writes. “Parents and educators are starting new models of schooling and reviving old ones. Hybrid schools, co-ops, classical conversations, and others offer a wide variety of options for families.”
Dills says government-run schools try to be everything to everyone. Students with particular needs can absorb resources depriving other students.
In addition, as schools are overwhelmed with illegal immigrant children, the need to provide service to every child is becoming a major problem for educators, as Heartland Daily News previously reported. Some schools are even considering eliminating the teaching of English to accommodate the many non-English speaking students inundating classrooms.
Public schools are already seeing a steep decline in enrollment, yet the cost of education is increasing, the Manhattan Institute reports. Since 2014, public school enrollment has fallen by 2 percent. During that same period, the number of educational staff has risen by 5 percent.
In 2020, schools were given additional sums of money purportedly to deal with pandemic-related needs and expenses. Over three years, school districts were handed an additional $125 billion of taxpayer money more than they would have received without the special circumstances.
New York City public schools now spend $37,000 per student per year. Los Angeles pays $25,000 per student per year. Nationally, per student spending is up 21 percent for an average cost of $16,000 per child.
Regardless of all the additional taxpayer money going to schools, unions continue to demand more.
“Advocates for higher teacher pay and swelling school budgets, led by teachers’ unions, also say that the money is essential to help students recover from the extensive learning loss that marked the Covid shutdowns,” writes Steven Malanga for the Manhattan Institute.
“But unions themselves were among the strongest advocates for extensive closures, and unionized districts experienced some of the longest stretches of remote learning—and hence the steepest learning loss.”
Homeschooling has become the fastest-growing form of education, The Washington Post reports. Democrat-run states like New York and California saw the most growth in the homeschooling trend.
“Such a rapid growth in the number and diversity of homeschooling families indicates that more and more American parents are dissatisfied with their children’s education in traditional public schools—and deciding to take matters into their own hands,” writes Emma Camp for Reason.
There are many reasons parents are pulling their children out of the government-run schools. Parents are concerned about the teaching of factually inaccurate history, the failure to encourage creativity and critical thinking skills, and leftist indoctrination.
“The generation of people who want to cancel historical figures are the same ones who score the absolute lowest in historical literacy on every survey and national report card over the past twenty years,” writes homeschooling Mom and author Holly Metesh for The Home School Historian. “They’re floating out on an island with no idea there’s an entire continent not far away.”
“In an ideal world, keep your kids out of public/traditional education at all costs,” writes Hannah Franklin, Hazlitt Fellow and host of The Hannah Frankman Podcast on X. “School is the primary killer of childhood curiosity and creativity.”
“Homeschooling is the way our 2 youngest have NEVER stepped foot into an indoctrination camp (public school) and when our 2 oldest were remove(d) their test scores doubled in 6 months,” writes father and business owner Curt Jefferey on X. “They spent 5 years doing book reports on minority celebrities but didn’t know the branches of Government!”
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