Here’s Justin Haskins writing over at Townhall (with a little emphasis added):
America’s first universal school choice program is a plan that will allow every parent in the state to have access to a restricted-use education spending account that will help parents pay for a variety of different education options. Parents will receive 90 percent of the funds that would have been allotted on their children under the traditional model, a figure that amounts to between $5,100 and $5,700 annually. Parents who have children with special needs will receive the full 100 percent.
For the first time, all parents are being empowered to use tax dollars in a way that will be most beneficial for their own children. The positives of such a program are seemingly endless, and much has already been written about how this model could revolutionize the U.S. education system and improve the lives of millions of kids. What I think has not been properly considered though is what this means for the pro-liberty movement in general and how conservatives can and should take advantage of this model.
For more than a generation now, pro-liberty parents have been shelling out thousands of tax dollars to fill the coffers of teachers unions, who predominantly support Democrats, and to bankroll an education system that largely rejects the belief people ought to have as much freedom as possible. Conservative parents have watched their kids transform into cute little wealth redistributionists without any way of stopping it.
With educational freedom, however, that can all change. Parents, at least in Nevada, can now remove their children from schools where their kids are being taught values they reject and moved into schools that share similar values, or at least aren’t actively rooting for socialism!
…
Yes, building hundreds—and eventually thousands—of liberty-focused schools would be expensive, but if conservatives stopped investing $300 million in disastrous and ineffective organizations such as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, there’d be plenty of funding for building schools. Especially wealthy conservatives (I’m talking to you Koch brothers) committed to liberty could even create financial institutions that could help get pro-liberty schools up and running.
Read more: Townhall.com
Image credit: www.townhall.com.
