Two steps forward for private education
City Considers Plan to Let Outsiders Run Schools - New York Times
In what would be the biggest change yet to the way New York City’s school system is administered, officials are considering plans to hire private groups at taxpayer expense to manage scores of public schools.
Finally, more people are starting to realize that government running our schools is a Bad Thing™. Why anyone would think this was a good idea in the first place is beyond me. Why would we think that government can run our schools better than they can run anything else? And given that schools are developing our most important resources, our children, why do we leave that to the government bureacracy?
Randi Weingarten, the teachers’ union president, urged the administration to make its discussions more public. “I have been concerned about the sub rosa debate on whether to privatize the management of the school system for quite a while,” she said. “On an issue that is this transcendent there has to be a real public debate.”
What Ms. Weingarten is mad about is that she’s not getting the opportunity to get teachers union up in arms to feed FUD to the parents about this. This is really not something that the teachers union should have any say in. Given that the fed has taken the responsibility of running our schools from us, how they choose to manage those schools is up to them, not the teachers union. I’m not saying it should be up to them, but this move toward privatizing management of the schools, so that people can actually be held accountable for how their schools do can’t be a bad thing.
“Can you imagine these people picking what they want to do in instruction?” said a veteran education official who asked not to be identified, fearing retribution for not supporting the chancellor’s agenda. “They don’t know what they are doing.”The educator added: “This is a way to crush public education. This is not a way to improve a school system.”
Yes, and that is exactly what is needed, to crush public education. We do not need a public school system, and we got on quite well before there was one. We’ll get along even better after it is gone.
And, just because you knew it had to come, here is the one step back:
Now, I am all for the bestowal of citizenship on young people, they are as much a part of our society as anyone else, but public schooling is not a “right” that needs to be given to anyone. The constitution is set up to limit what the government can do, not to give out “rights”. When we start thinking that way, that our rights are given to us by government, not restricted by it, that way lies disaster.