# Should we make all kids go to Public schools? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 8, 2018, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043 "2018-04-08T23:56:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/41 "2018-04-09T19:25:39Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Consider this: public schools, though funded by taxes, are basically free for the parents and are not meeting the standards of many parents. Those parents are either choosing in the best interest of their children to: 1 move to a area with a highly rated public school which is very limited and few options and very expensive tax wise, 2: private school 3: home schooling options. > . Oh I have some other options: #4. Claim to live in a certain area so you can send your kid to a good public school. We see this in our area all the time where you have this total dump of a district Kansas City Missouri, surrounded by districts which are much better. #5. If someones kid is from the inner city and shows major athletic talent, their can be some conversations and the parents will suddenly find an affordable apartment in a better district. #6. Vote your school out of the crap district and either form your own or get it moved to another. I saw is where a group of parents, voted and got it approved to move their high school, [Van Horn and its feeder schools from the KCMO district to the Independence Missouri distric](http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/steve-rose/article325444/Rebirth-of-Van-Horn-High-School-is-a-sign-of-hope.html)t. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/42 "2018-04-09T19:26:09Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > This also sounds dictatorial. We have [compulsory education laws](http://education.findlaw.com/education-options/compulsory-education-laws-background.html) in the US. Having society define what that education entails is normal and to be expected. Indeed you have to set parameters else the compulsory education laws are meaningless. There are all sorts of “must do” and “must not do” things in our education system. Saying you cannot home school your kid is not a reach. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/43 "2018-04-09T19:27:57Z")
Perhaps you are not familiar with the concept of per-student spending. A given school has a thousand students, and receives $5000 per student per year. Five hundred of the students move away, or go to a different school (not necessarily a private school, just not this one). Should the school receive the same funding? That was the “harm” the two cites on which I commented were claiming - that students going to charter schools meant that the school they no longer attended didn’t get paid for educating students that didn’t attend there. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/44 "2018-04-09T19:28:26Z")
> [@WillReadmore](#): > > … Luckily enough, we have plenty of successful public high schools. We also have successful private high schools. > > But, we’re not finding those schools and promoting their methods throughout the public high schools of our nation. > > There isn’t any good excuse for that failure. We should be demanding this. This is one of the reasons we got so crazy about testing. My impression is that the biggest factor in “success” / “failure” of a school is the composition of the student body. Want a “successful” school? Fill it with suburban kids from stable, two-parent homes that value education, put effort into (and have time and money available) to help with homework, extra-curriculars, etc. Find schools with poor, inner-city populations, often-times single parents who may be working late and not around to help kids with homework, perhaps don’t always understand the importance of education, etc, and those schools will often be deemed “failures”. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/45 "2018-04-09T19:30:36Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > … Saying you cannot home school your kid is not a reach. It is for me (and for SCOTUS I believe): > [@](#): > > [In the United States, homeschooling is lawful in all fifty states. The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on homeschooling specifically, but in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972)[14] it supported the rights of Amish parents to keep their children out of public schools for religious reasons. The Court has ruled, however, that parents have a fundamental right to “establish a home and bring up children” along with the right to “worship God according to the dictates of [their] own conscience.” [15] This combination of rights is the basis for calling homeschooling a fundamental right under the Supreme Court’s concept of liberty protected by the Due Process clause. Laws that restrict fundamental rights are subject to strict scrutiny, the highest standard, if the law is challenged in the courts.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_in_the_United_States#U.S._Supreme_Court_precedent) ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/46 "2018-04-09T19:30:38Z")
Here’s what you get when you get as close as possible (in the US) to a libertopia style education system: > [@](#): > > The lack of regulation had the desired effect: Michigan became a boom state for a growing new education sector. By 2000, Michigan had 184 charter schools, by Miron’s count, more than any state but Arizona and California. > > \ > > The results have been stark. The 2016 report by the Education Trust-Midwest noted: > > Michigan’s K-12 system is among the weakest in the country and getting worse. In little more than a decade, Michigan has gone from being a fairly average state in elementary reading and math achievement to the bottom 10 states. It’s a devastating fall. Indeed, new national assessment data suggest Michigan is witnessing systemic decline across the K-12 spectrum. White, black, brown, higher-income, low-income — it doesn’t matter who they are or where they live. … > > SOURCE: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/magazine/michigan-gambled-on-charter-schools-its-children-lost.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/magazine/michigan-gambled-on-charter-schools-its-children-lost.html) The Michigan education system had some serious problems to be sure but private schools have clearly been terrible overall for the kids of Michigan. ---
**Author:** ![WillReadmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/6f9a4e/32.png) [@WillReadmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillReadmore)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/47 "2018-04-09T19:34:35Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Nice but a hijack. We dont need to get into the debate about free college here. Please. I have a hard time excluding “higher” education from the discussion of public schools. We have numerous public schools beyond high school. And, our goal for k-12 needs to be far more than considering k-12 the end of the line. This has significant implications for what we do in k-12 in terms of what we consider to be a success, whether we see it as OK to leave behind those who don’t have the money for further education, etc. Every single high school in America has kids who are interested in higher education. And, for those who aren’t, we still have the challenge that k-12 may be all they get!! In the end, we can’t form our direction on the basis of whether wealthy parents have a path for their kids. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/48 "2018-04-09T19:36:38Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > It is for me (and for SCOTUS I believe): I realize home schooling is currently legal. I am saying it shouldn’t be. Maybe carve out a religious exception for Amish kids. We live in a society and part of raising children is having them socialized into that society. Keeping them at home run counter to that societal goal. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/49 "2018-04-09T19:37:51Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Here’s what you get when you get as close as possible (in the US) to a libertopia style education system: > > The Michigan education system had some serious problems to be sure but private schools have clearly been terrible overall for the kids of Michigan. Hopefully, none of the people responsible for that disaster have been elevated to a country-wide position! ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/50 "2018-04-09T19:41:37Z")
> [@WillReadmore](#): > > The question is NOT whether there is enough spending on public education. > > The question has to be what we need to do to make public education successful. I agree with your first statement, and decline to agree with your second. The question has to be what we need to do to make education successful. If we create a system somehow whereby public education disappears, yet overall US students are as well or better educated as they are now, that’s fine with me. I doubt that is what will happen, nor should it happen, necessarily, but the purpose of education is education - all other considerations come a long second. > [@](#): > > Luckily enough, we have plenty of successful public high schools. We also have successful private high schools. > > But, we’re not finding those schools and promoting their methods throughout the public high schools of our nation. > > There isn’t any good excuse for that failure. We should be demanding this. This is one of the reasons we got so crazy about testing. Vouchers and school choice are a way to promote the success of private schools to the public schools. And they are fiercely resisted by the teachers’ unions, and the educational bureaucracy in general. My ideal would be a mixed system. Everyone gets a voucher. The public schools have to accept anyone who applies. (Special education students could get larger vouchers). Other private schools can accept or reject students as they do now. The lowest level of students would probably wind up in public school, and would receive a crappy education. Just as they do now. Parents who value public education could send their children to the public schools as well, and their children would probably receive much the same level of education as they do now. Parents could apply for their children to get into whatever school they can get into. Those students get, on average, a better education than they do now, since the teachers are not distracted as much as dealing with trouble-makers - they are off disrupting the public school classes like they are now. Some students would do better, most would do the same, very few are going to be much worse. Not exactly a win-win, but close. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/51 "2018-04-09T19:42:19Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > It is for me (and for SCOTUS I believe): It is worth noting that in [Employment Division v Smith](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/494/872) the Supreme Court ruled that even though it historically was part of their religion states could ban the use of peyote in native American religious ceremonies. Clearly the court can decide that religion does not trump state law if they feel like it and the state can assert a compelling interest when it comes to the education of its citizens. They may not want to but it would not be hard for the Supreme Court to go there if they felt like it. ---
**Author:** ![WillReadmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/6f9a4e/32.png) [@WillReadmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillReadmore)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/52 "2018-04-09T19:43:53Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > My impression is that the biggest factor in “success” / “failure” of a school is the composition of the student body. Want a “successful” school? Fill it with suburban kids from stable, two-parent homes that value education, put effort into (and have time and money available) to help with homework, extra-curriculars, etc. Find schools with poor, inner-city populations, often-times single parents who may be working late and not around to help kids with homework, perhaps don’t always understand the importance of education, etc, and those schools will often be deemed “failures”. I certainly agree this is part of the challenge. Maybe we need to be spending more time teaching kids the importance of education, what the opportunities actually are, how the world works in terms of education, what careers exist, etc. My daughter has spent time with inner city high school kids who are considering applying to colleges. One of the big issues is they just don’t understand the opportunity, how they could pay off debt with more zeros than they could possibly pay, who it is that would hire them, etc. One kid told her that he knows people who borrowed that much money, and they’re all dead. So, the minimum effort to get out of HS becomes the education objective. This affects those who end their education at any level. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/53 "2018-04-09T19:47:34Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Or, y’know, we could treat the goddamned problem, which is that public schools are inadequately prepared to deal with children coming from a violent and unequal society. > > When we have cities devastated by institutional racism, where there are poor, ghettoized communities rife with violence, where many of the men are locked up, where cops are brutal, the kids come to school deeply traumatized. They have an even harder time sitting still and learning fractions than a conscripted soldier fresh from battle would have. > > But middle-class parents tsk and whisk their own kids out of this setting, leading to even more segregated schools, leading to less support for schools from the politically powerful, leading to even fewer resources available to kids coming from trauma. Then those same middle-class parents have the audacity to turn around and blame the schools. You have a good augment but how to accomplish this is the question. ending options for parents will either force them to seek high performing schools and pay high taxes for that, or have them send their children to low performing schools. Basically creating the same divide of public vs private/homeschooling, but in this case public in a high tax area vs lower taxed area. And we pretty much have that divide already within public school systems. So your solution is to treat the goddamned problem, but you don’t offer any avenue forward in that line. Perhaps we can pray for aliens to show up and show us how to to do that??? Even send distress signals via radio frequencies into space to the nearest exoplanets that have the greatest chance of life. Perhaps they have a way to do this, but it appears you do not. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/54 "2018-04-09T19:48:46Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > We live in a society and part of raising children is having them socialized into that society. Keeping them at home run counter to that societal goal. Do you have any hard evidence that home-schooled students are less well-socialized than other kinds? > [@](#): > > Stough (1992) and Smedley (1992) both tested home-schooled children and children > attending traditional schools with a more widely used measure of social development, the > Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Sparrow, Balla, & Cicchetti, 1984). Whereas Stough > found no significant differences between the groups, Smedley reported that homeschooled > children scored higher on the communication, daily living skills, socialization, > and social maturity subscales of the test. The mean score overall for the home school > group fell at the 84th percentile and for the conventional school group at the 23rd > percentile. Smedley concluded that “children kept home are more mature and better > socialized than those who are sent to school” (p. 12). [Cite - pdf](http://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socialization-2000.pdf). Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![WillReadmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/6f9a4e/32.png) [@WillReadmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillReadmore)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/55 "2018-04-09T19:57:48Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I agree with your first statement, and decline to agree with your second. The question has to be what we need to do to make education successful. If we create a system somehow whereby public education disappears, yet overall US students are as well or better educated as they are now, that’s fine with me. I doubt that is what will happen, nor should it happen, necessarily, but the purpose of education is education - all other considerations come a long second. > Vouchers and school choice are a way to promote the success of private schools to the public schools. And they are fiercely resisted by the teachers’ unions, and the educational bureaucracy in general. > > My ideal would be a mixed system. Everyone gets a voucher. The public schools have to accept anyone who applies. (Special education students could get larger vouchers). Other private schools can accept or reject students as they do now. > > The lowest level of students would probably wind up in public school, and would receive a crappy education. Just as they do now. Parents who value public education could send their children to the public schools as well, and their children would probably receive much the same level of education as they do now. Parents could apply for their children to get into whatever school they can get into. Those students get, on average, a better education than they do now, since the teachers are not distracted as much as dealing with trouble-makers - they are off disrupting the public school classes like they are now. Some students would do better, most would do the same, very few are going to be much worse. Not exactly a win-win, but close. > > Regards, > Shodan I agree that if there were some way other than public school, that would be fine. The objective IS education, not funding method or organization method. BUT, I do not see an alternative proposal that accomplishes the education objective. Vouchers just don’t work. Beyond k-6 they don’t pencil out, leaving the money going to parents who already have the money and the motivation. And, the places where they have been tried haven’t succeeded in quality or even just in addressing those kids who are capable and interested. This idea of identifying and filtering out “lowest level students” for failure is pathetic. I know there are learning deficits, but this method filters out those who are fully capable. Plus, we need to be addressing those with deficits at least as aggressively. We have public schools that work. We should be promoting them. We’re a long way away from having US public schools all following models that have had proven success. Plus, we can’t afford to just ignore the brain power that hasn’t been motivated by parents. ---
**Author:** ![WillReadmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/6f9a4e/32.png) [@WillReadmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillReadmore)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/56 "2018-04-09T20:05:02Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Do you have any hard evidence that home-schooled students are less well-socialized than other kinds? > [Cite - pdf](http://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socialization-2000.pdf). > > Regards, > Shodan From your cite: “Studies of home schooling and socialization have the customary faults of research in a very young field:\*\* no guiding theory, inadequate experimental design, poorly defined research questions, untried and weak measures, unorthodox treatment and presentation of data, and conclusions based on subjective judgments\*\*. Even a cursory look at the research reveals that many studies are qualitative descriptions of so few participants that the results cannot be generalized. **Many are surveys that rely exclusively on parental reports but offer no idea of how reliable those reports may be. **Many** test only home-schooled children** without comparing them to children attending conventional schools, making it very difficult to know what the results might mean. Furthermore, as Ray and Wartes (1991) pointed out, **all home school research is correlational** (because researchers have no way to control the type of schooling children experience), **samples are usually selfselected** (because researchers cannot require home schooling families to participate), and, however carefully researchers try to match their home-schooled and traditionally schooled groups, there are probably still important differences between the two.” ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/57 "2018-04-09T20:31:21Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I agree with your first statement, and decline to agree with your second. The question has to be what we need to do to make education successful. If we create a system somehow whereby public education disappears, yet overall US students are as well or better educated as they are now, that’s fine with me. I doubt that is what will happen, nor should it happen, necessarily, but the purpose of education is education - all other considerations come a long second. > Vouchers and school choice are a way to promote the success of private schools to the public schools. And they are fiercely resisted by the teachers’ unions, and the educational bureaucracy in general. > > My ideal would be a mixed system. Everyone gets a voucher. The public schools have to accept anyone who applies. (Special education students could get larger vouchers). Other private schools can accept or reject students as they do now. > > The lowest level of students would probably wind up in public school, and would receive a crappy education. Just as they do now. Parents who value public education could send their children to the public schools as well, and their children would probably receive much the same level of education as they do now. Parents could apply for their children to get into whatever school they can get into. Those students get, on average, a better education than they do now, since the teachers are not distracted as much as dealing with trouble-makers - they are off disrupting the public school classes like they are now. Some students would do better, most would do the same, very few are going to be much worse. Not exactly a win-win, but close. > > Regards, > Shodan Thus massively increasing the stratification of society, as kids are divided at an early age into “Good” and “Why bother”, which then grow up into educated alphas who have only socialized with other alphas vs Gammas who have only socialized with other Gammas, for whom the only lesson they have learned is that they are not worth being taught. The great thing about a public education system is that it exposes children to all different types of people with different backgrounds, attitudes and life experiences. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/58 "2018-04-09T20:38:09Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > What? > > Regards, > Shodan What what? I’ll take a guess: I think it should be illegal to conduct a child’s whole education using a religious point of view, that it should be illegal to run a full-education religious school, and that it should be illegal to homeschool for religious reasons. I am in favour of religious education as an additional program for those who choose it, as long as they are the only ones paying for it. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/59 "2018-04-09T21:07:59Z")
Yikes. As a now former public school teacher, I find quite a bit of what’s been posted here quite discomforting. The idea in America that you would not be allowed to school your children as you see fit is simply scary. Go move to a socialist state, where individual options are not an option, please. We are a country with individual rights, and an emphasis upon individuality, thank-you very much! I believe the real problem with the system is simple: the focus is moving away from providing an effective public school system. The whole idea of backpack funding demonstrates this. The money doesn’t “belong” to the child, nor can you set up a publicly-funded system of education where simply letting the money follow the child will produce schools which are sufficiently effective no matter where the child takes the money. The simple concept of “economy of scale” gets lost with that, not to mention the difficulty of properly providing an effective education for those who are more difficult to educate for reasons covered by the various “special education” programs. But the pressure on parents to **want** to have their child opt out of the traditional system would disappear if the traditional system was accomplishing the goal of effective education. Equally funded education is not going to accomplish that goal. There are some places where education, to be effective, will cost more than in others. Educating children growing up in poverty is an example: simply to make up the difference in conditions inherently requires added expenditure. Part of why that is difficult to make happen is that we continue in most states to rely upon locally-raised property taxes to fund the bulk of education costs. But even in states where that is NOT true (like the state I taught in, and live in, South Carolina), there is little political willpower to provide the unequal resources needed to create effective schools in areas stricken by poverty (whether urban or rural). On the contrary; the system limps along at a minimal level in impoverished areas, while being supplanted by extra monies in areas with higher-income families. It’s no shock that the schools in Fort Mill, SC, are better at educating children than the schools in Chester, SC, which is just 30-odd miles down the road. If parents want to opt out of the public system of education, that’s fine. But the concept that they should be able to take “their child’s” money with them ignores the fact that a public education system (the goal of almost every other country in the world) that is based upon some form of free-market purchase of education will not work, even if public dollars are funneled into it. Unless, of course, you want your public education system to look a lot like your public health system… ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043/60 "2018-04-09T21:33:09Z")
Yes, all kids should go to public schools (I say this as a public school graduate and with teachers in every generation since my great-grandfather in 1874). I also fear that we are falling behind the rest of the world in educational attainment and hours attended (because of agrarian holdovers). So… [ul] [li]No public funding of private or religious schools[/li][li]Private and religious schools allowed after hours, weekends and summers[/li][li]Students stay in public schools until they can test out of required curricula[/li][li]Vocational training or community college/university prep included as public schooling (via industry programs or opt-in taxation)[/li][/ul] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-all-kids-go-to-public-schools/812043.md?page=4)