The current system might be analogous to a “Weekend at Bernie’s” in which the current school system is Bernie and Department of Education and the NEA drag the body around, hoping we won’t notice.

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Most of us agree that higher education is way Liberal. How will we get a change in schools when we have the same bent of teacher being produced by the Liberal/Leftist schools of education that presently produce our teachers? Christian Liberal Arts colleges need to produce balanced teachers, not right wing nuts. Time will tell when Christians (Christ) start to make a difference.

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Way to love the poor, bro. There might be a way to privatize education entirely and affordably, but it would take a century to put in place. In the mean time, our cities are full of youth who can’t read or add. The common schools have been an American solution to such a problem since the 18th century. They need to be fixed a thousand different ways. But, abandoning them is abandoning the most vulnerable Americans.

There is no government supplied good or service that cannot be done way better and less expensively by private enterprise. We know this so we need to just continue going down that path.

1) Law Enforcement
2) Military
3) Air Traffic control
4) Post roads (see Constitution)

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When you need a cop, I’m sure you’ll be glad to call the private militia run by your competitor or enemy. And instead of being fearful you will be thankful for all the hideous taxes you saved.

When you get on a plane, I’m sure you’ll be comforted by the thought that the privatized safety agency was just taken over by a French/Arab consortium.

And when you approach a curve on a new, rain slicked road, I’m sure your kids won’t mind that the asphalt supplier and quality inspection company actually belong to the same shareholders.

But hey, it’s a dog eat dog world and if your kid just happens to be asleep on the back seat, well, it’s just the marketplace at work, isn’t it?

Kyle A: I am saying that unfortunately there are a lot of places (including more than a few in the north) in this country where like-minded people of the same race or religion have and would gladly exercise the power to educate their own kids at the expense of their neighbors’.

And yes, in my opinion there is a direct line connecting Southern resentment over forcible integration and the rise of the Nixon coalition and the “Reagan Democrats”.

Racism is an insidious evil which is a long way from having disappeared.

And religious supremacy, coming from many corners, seems to me to be getting worse by the day. The idea of allowing these zealots to be paid by the state to propagate their doctrines is just this side of nuts.

Sadly, this country still needs someone to reasonably fairly enforce rules honoring our commitment to provide every child with at least access to a good education without regard to that child’s color or his/her family’s beliefs.

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“It interesting that Peterson dates the decline to around 1970. That’s just about the time that intransigent, segregationist, “separate but equal” local school boards were finally brought to heel by the feds and states in order to protect minority students and assure at least some kind of equality.”

I will not argue this, but please explain the fall of mighty California schools from the top of the heap to the bottom. This was paralleled by the Democrat-ization of the Golden State.

I guess that the liberals just need more time and more money to fix the problems of our schools, like they have fixed the Washington, D.C. schools.

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Are you trying to say that the concern about education problems is really a cover for ongoing resentment over segregation?

At my son’s small private school there are several Black, Hispanic, and Asian kids who all outperform the average public school student. And there would be more of them if the government would let the parents spend their education allotment at the school of their choice.

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