Funding Should Follow the Child

Americans have decided, as a society, to use taxes to finance some or all of the schooling of children regardless of their parents’ ability to pay tuition at private schools. This creates a potential conflict with the right of parents to control the education of their children. With certain precautions, that conflict can be addressed by allowing tax dollars to follow the child to whatever school his or her parents choose.

Unfortunately, under the current system funding practices empower bureaucracies, not parents. About half of the taxes collected for education flow from taxpayers to federal or state departments of education, and from there to local school districts and finally to public schools and teachers. Local property taxes typically go to local school districts or to state agencies for redistribution to “property poor” school districts. Because of bureaucracy, two of every five tax dollars raised for schools do not even make it to the classroom. This system concentrates authority in the hands of small groups of largely unelected officials, often far removed from the classroom. Over time, this system has become heavily bureaucratic, wasteful, and resistant to change.

Funding follows a different set of rules in the private school sector. There, parents pay tuition directly to the educators they choose for their children, so funds automatically follow the child. The freedom to choose motivates parents to study their choices closely and let educators know what kinds of schools they want. Competition for tuition leads educators to modify and improve their offerings, and unnecessary and expensive bureaucracies are not tolerated.