“[A]ny provider that commands 90 percent of the market—whether we’re talking about software, phone service, or heating oil—is, by definition, a monopoly. Our government employs thousands of bureaucrats to track down and break up monopolies on the grounds that monopolies stifle competition and thereby produce bad products at high prices. Doesn’t it strike anyone as strange that the same government protects its own monopoly in education? And stranger still, that nearly everyone accepts this state of affairs as normal—as something that has always been and must always be? ... [C]ompetition forces public schools into making long-overdue repairs. And it offers poor parents the choices they desperately desire.”

Simple, to the point, and accurate. Government schools are detrimental to freedom, liberty, a government of law and justice, individual sovereignty and unalienable rights, individual thought, good education, and knowledge in general. I have 2 good friends that were forced out of the business (in 2 different states) because they dared to teach math, reading and other accepted topics beyond grade level. Such child progression was loved by parents and despised by government management.

Our "educators" have become little more than day care attendants teaching trivial drool, in order to stupify young Americans into accepting a Fascist Government as "God". It's very subtle and completely evil.

It's interesting to note how teachers unions fight like tigers in opposition to charter schools or any thing that threatens their monopoly.

Improvement will begin when we rid ourselves of federal invovement in local affairs. The federal Dept. of Education should not exist.

It's time for the Federal government to return education to it's rightful place, under the jurisdiction of the States. It's also time for the NEA to be dissolved. No public (government) employee at any level should be allowed in a union. Even FDR knew that and he was a Progressive.

I agree with you Carol and I'm a socialist

The requirement that children be educated is a state or societal mandate or dictate, like it or not. That private individuals and institutions have opted to step into the breach after the fact is laudable even if substantially a Johhnny Come Lately approach. We should welcome them but never forget it is us the citizens of soceity and us who have formed the state that have made it all possible. I know of no Federal Law requiring that states or their subdivisins have education or schools. School financing is generally 60% local, 30% state and 10% Federal. Joining a union should be (if it is not already) a Constitutional Right, The Feds employes approx. 2 million, the states cities and towns approx 20 million.

The issue of unions is not whether they can be formed, it is whether one MUST join in order to work -- that is racketeering. Forced membership into unions is a facist concept. The result is the hijacking of businesses by their own workers. In America anyone can form clubs and associations, but no one can be forced to be in one. Anyone may apply for work, but employers have the choice of hiring -- how could they not? A 'job' is a contract with terms and conditions -- no one can be forced into a contract -- that would be a form of servitude. You accept the terms and deliver as agreed or you are in breach of contract, whether employer or employee. The forced unionizing of the public sector, or any sector for that matter, is nothing more than mafiosa. Waffler is the prime example of what a government education is designed to produce. There is a difference between 'educated' and 'learned.'

*Excellent* representation of the dictatorship the government has in the field of education. The NEA fights savagely to keep their "rights", and that becomes their ONLY goal; education can go to Hell, which it has due to incompetent and sometimes abusive teachers that are not allowed to be fired or even disciplined.

Check the facts, for instance: http://www.capenet.org/facts.html tells us that less than 90% of students attend public school and that 25% of the schools are private... it also reveals that most of these schools are religious based... there's no monopoly here, but no, you can not get governmental funding of those religious based programs!

We need a separation of school and state.  Try vouchers.

Competing against other human beings destroys the life force. Life is built soundly on the positive cooperative association of human friendship.