John:
The institutional comparison was meant to be a tactical one (monopoly) not a substantive one; your cautionary comments are on target. Still, I find the content of reports by Diane Ravitch troubling, to say the very least.
The next questions, if public funding is inevitable ?and by the way, I don’t object to that as long as attendance is not mandatory (thank you, to those who wish to tell me that it must be) ?are “How much money for public schools? What quality of schools will be funded? and most importantly?Who decides on the answer each of the above questions?”
Even I, sometime self-proclaimed smarty pants, don’t have any pretensions to benevolent dictator on these fundamental questions. I’d prefer to let the market…
Almost certainly, education will become more politically and less academically driven, due to the egalitarian and “leveling” concerns embodied in public funding, particularly if the NEA continues to dominate many decisions on entry into the field and the use of education budgets. Right now, those with a stake in the status quo, both in the education and education policy community, are doing quite well at the expense of students throughout the public system. I assume we can agree that that’s a bad thing, however supported.
