I guess the main question is this:
If private schools are so much better than public schools, then why haven't they supplanted public schools?
I mean, when you have a public school system, of course they will garner the most students, but why hasn't the proportion of private school students increased as public schools have allegedly been in decline, quality-wise?
The Catholic and other private schools in my area had an enrollment of 400 in 1985 compared to a public school enrollment of 4600. By 1997, public enrollment had increased to 5700 but private enrollment stood at 360. Currently public enrollment is at 5100 but private enrollment has fallen to 320.
The number of children that live in our district but attend neighboring public districts is about 600. District residents attending public schools is higher today than it has been since the 1960s.
Why?
The private schools do tend to have better test scores. But you can't compare because the private school population is not representative of the population as a whole.
By and large, people simply cannot afford private school. Reducing taxes and doing away with public schools would not save people here enough money to warrant sending children to schools of equal quality.
Quality would decline as teacher salaries and subsidization from richer areas in the state went away. My district already pays higher school property taxes than many areas of the state to maintain like school facilities and that includes quite a bit of "equalization" funding.
You would see good teachers flock to the suburban schools. This already happens with the public system and pay is more equal.
Eventually, the disparity between rural and suburban schools would grow even larger. Rural students would be stuck in rural areas because suburban jobs would be out of reach, and you would have a permanently stratified society except in rare cases.
The public school system is in place not to provide the most efficient education to students, but to provide a uniform, quality education, to all students funded by the public at large.
This way, a student in rural North Dakota can expect a quality education just as his counterpart in suburban Minneapolis can. That way, the student is prepared to compete for good jobs in prosperous areas rather than being stuck where he is without the opportunity to succeed.
When you open a market on a street, you don't say "oh, you're old.. you go sell your stuff with the old people... oh, you're brown.. you go sell your wares with the other brown people... oh, you're stupid.. go sell your products with the other dumbs."
You want everybody, young, old, black, white to have the same ground to spring from. Then, whoever is truly brilliant is rewarded.
Values aside, this seems largely accurate. I think you're over-looking one crucial point, however, and that is the value of competition. Competition tends to have a positive effect on overall quality through simple market mechanisms. That is why I like the voucher system. It retains all the positive effects of equal opportunity that you're talking about (and in fact I think it can enhance those effects) while at the same time benefiting from the competitive element.
