The Political Inquirer

Matt Yglesias believes that local control should be abolished in the school arena, because,

In a large and diverse country, there’s a case for some level of local control. But fundamentally most of what a kid in New Mexico needs to know is the same as what a kid in North Dakota or Vermont or Virginia needs to know, and intense localization creates tons and tons of problems for no real reason other than blind tradition.

The report he references in this post is “Nationalize the Schools (…A Little!)“, a report chock full examples showing the mediocrity and failure of the American school system. The answer, in their opinion? Nationalization!

Sorry, nationalization doesn’t cut it. Local control is messed up because of Federal involvement in the first place, but even that doesn’t go far enough. Complete privatization of schools would create a system of competition where the “best education for your buck” would reign supreme. It would solve the inner city crisis and people would get a better education for it.

Private schools now are often too expensive and sometimes their education quality is not up to par because they are competing against a school that doesn’t have to compete for money or students: the public school system. When a competitor gets money that is stolen from citizens via compulsion (taxes), there is almost no way to compete. However, a private system can (and often) does outperform the government business. We saw that with several private railroads that outperformed the government-subsidized Union Pacific and North Pacific.

Get the government out of schools. State mandated education only leads to brainwashing and being misinformed. Power that is available will always be used. Education by governments is one of the most powerful and has put our society in the state it is in today.

Nationalization will only make things worse.