Our Schools: Freedom from the 9,300

Ron Getty

Chair-Initiatives Committee

Today, California’s 9,300 government schools, funded by $63 billion in taxes, have 6.3 million K-12 students with 300,000 teachers and 25,000 bureaucrats and support personnel. Additionally, there are 4,000 school psychologists and 1,000 school librarians. The California Department of Education has 2,500 employees and a $300 million budget.

The $63 billion in taxes funding California schools represents 10 percent of the total combined state budgets for all 50 states.

By comparison, in California, 600,000 students attend private or home schools without public tax support. However, these students' parents still pay property taxes to support other parents' children attending government schools.

California’s schools operate under "education by politician" dictates and are managed by bureaucratic red-tape-ridden administrative "educrats." Another dictate overlying California’s public schools comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s "No Child Left Behind" minimum test score standards.

There’s an urgent need to dismantle California’s top-down authoritarian, socialistic, central-planning school system, which is irreparably harming our children’s education.

For starters, the hundreds of billions in tax dollars taken over decades for California schools have created a Frankenstein’s monster. Schools are bits of this and that sewn together by mad scientist politicians, educrats, and school boards. This mash-up has wrecked havoc on children’s education and effectively barred parents’ voices from being heard.

In addition, fears of violence in the schools have parents praying that their child’s school doesn’t become another Columbine or Virginia Tech University. As it is, California’s school system has armed police officers patrolling middle and high schools.

Third, parents are worried about teacher morals. The news reports on teachers being arrested and convicted for child molestation and sexual relations with students. Yet suing to remove a tenured teacher for misconduct can cost school districts $100,000 in legal fees alone.

Fourth, compulsory school attendance imposes one-size-fits-all, lowest common denominator learning. Religious children find their religion mocked or themselves being denigrated. Special-education children don’t receive professional help in learning how to learn. Gifted children are rarely aided in learning how to use their innate intelligence or even being properly identified as gifted. Minority children barely receive the necessary basic language, reading, and writing skills needed to function in an English-language society.

No group of parents has successfully sued a school system for educational malpractice – even though malpractice happens every school day.

The severe disconnect in promises and what’s delivered by California schools can never be overcome. That’s why 21st-century Californians should immediately adopt a libertarian approach based on free-market competition. What would this approach entail?

First, shut down California’s noncompetitive government schools. To create capital for free-market competitive schools, repeal the tax laws taking $63 billion for government schools. Then allow free-market schools to be opened without the mandated administrative bureaucracy and "education by politician" syllabuses.

Second, update education in California by creating virtual schools, where the education is taught online by experienced tutors. Have Web-based live video and audio feedback educational programs.

Third, open local neighborhood small-by-design schools where parents and teachers can consult on the educational material and the teaching standards.

Fourth, emphasize home schooling by parents, as parents are the best teachers for learning about religion, sexuality, and morality. Disengaged teachers teaching politically dictated lessons on family issues is an arrogant abrogation of parents’ rights by California schools.

Fifth, give tax credits for:

• Opening free-market schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods;

• People or companies pooling their money to provide an education for students of poor families;

• Industrial and business groups pooling their money to help learning disabled, gifted, and minority students receive help from properly trained professionals; and

• The income earned by free-market school teachers as an attraction to teaching.

Free-market competition in education will offer a wide ranging choice of low-cost, high-quality teaching in a variety of disciplines with affordable to free tuition based on needs.

California’s children and their education is our most precious resource. Children must be protected from the corrosive impact of California’s government schools’ top-down socialistic, politically-dictated education. Democratic free-market schools based on liberty, free-thinking, and independence are the wave for California’s continued and future growth.