Here's a story about a home-schooled girl winning a national competition. Statistically, it's meaningless--she might simply be a very, very smart young lady. And, I'm not one to home school my kids--I'd make a horrible teacher. My wife, on the other hand, is a great teacher, and so if she decided to educate either of our children, then I certainly wouldn't complain.


That would be the deeper point here, of course. The quality of education comes down to the teachers and the methods, both of which can be quite variable from one school (and system) to another.

Public, i.e., government-controlled, schools are necessarily run from a political perspective, as opposed to responding to competitive pressures. Parents have no real say in how their children are educated in public schools; the idea that "all politics are local" breaks down when schools must meet State- and Federal-mandated standards that are completely divorced from the local community. And, public schools are funded regardless of how well or poorly they educate their students, and in fact there seems to be an inverse relationship--the worse the school, the more money it receives, as if money itself is the sole determinant of educational quality.



Contrast this with a private school, which competes against both public and other private schools for funds, which are paid directly by a student's parents. Certainly, factors other than educational quality influence the success of a private school--religious, ethical, social, and other factors also weigh in. However, there can be no doubt that a private school that provided poor educational outcome wouldn't last long.

To bring things back to the story linked above, home schooling is no guarantee of success--again, I would be a terrible, if well-intentioned, home school teacher. Rather, it's the underlying philosophy and methods of teaching that matters. Removing education from the public sphere is the only way to ensure that competition, and not political expediency, determines how well our students are educated.