Matt, you’re on target in several places, but I think I see something which I’ve noticed in charter school community before — there is still the assumption that the state should assess taxes and then redistribute them for educational purposes.
Even granting community value to educating all young citizens (whether they or their parents desire it or not), and therefore some community responsibility to facilitate that process, do we therefore conclude that it should be completely tax-funded for all children, regardless of family means, choice of methodology, or scope of instruction sought? I would argue, state constitution notwithstanding, that it needn’t be.
Last year there were about 141,000 children in North Carolina whose parents chose to pay for their own children’s education, at least to the extent that they aren’t privately subsidized (either by a scholarship fund, or a ministry-based school which charges tuition less than the actual expenses, etc). I can’t speak to the private school community, but a federal study compiled in 1999 indicated the household income of home educators is right on the national average . I can’t imagine the private school community lives on less. If true, it suggests that, at least from an economic standpoint, there are many, many other families which would be theoretically capable of the same.
For my part, I would say the needful philosophical shift is not in how the state and local authorities distribute tax dollars, but rather in how we parent-taxpayers choose to line up for the distribution. We each make choices and provide for our own family’s needs in food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and health care; relatively few of us depend on government assistance to provide these things, though it exists for those in need. I would contend that if each of us took care of our educational needs the same way, then the majority of K-12 education could be privatized, North Carolina could back down from spending over 40 cents of every dollar collected on school systems, and a tighter and leaner Department of Public Instruction could focus the state’s attention on the truly needy.
