Thursday, August 20, 2009

As is Always the Case, Competition is Good

Paramount to providing a quality education for our youth is also to provide parents the flexibility to send their kids to what they themselves feel is the best learning atmosphere for their children. The state can set standards for learning, but allowing the freedom for parents to send their kids where they wish creates a free-market, private-sector type of system where we can identify where improvements need to be made and discover what great schools are doing right more easily and learn from their ideas.

The cycle of school consolidation in recent years decreases the number of options parents have to send their kids. Like this article from the Pierre Capital Journal states, some parents prefer to send their children to smaller schools for the intimate atmosphere; others to larger schools. Shouldn’t that be up for parents to decide, and not be dictated by the state?







1 comment:

caheidelberger said...

Competition is always good? Don't small schools rely on the cooperation of the entire state to funnel tax dollars from the larger richer districts to the smaller districts that would have trouble surviving without the small-school adjustment?