August 27, 2017: Del Rio News-Herald * Letter to the Editor * Education evolution
Letter to the Editor,
Education Evolution
School choice is becoming our new normal because it encompasses inclusion, openness, and redefinition; not as opponents who falsely frame the debate in terms of replacement or, even worse, destruction.
School-choice advocates seek to destroy nothing, least of all existing schools.
They only seek to redefine “public education” so that the concept includes and extends financial recognition to a range of institutions that are already in existence by acknowledging that there is no legitimate reason to prolong the monopoly status enjoyed by government institutions in the use of tax-generated educational funds. It’s as simple and non-threatening as that.
Educational reformers see this change as bringing America into congruence with established practice in many broad-minded, enlightened, tolerant democracies.
Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and others are already enjoying great educational success by doing what supporters of school choice desire for American education: permitting the use of publicly collected funds by educational institutions other than those run directly by the state.
Current American policy on the use of educational funding, most closely mirrors the practice of the most regressive and inhumane of modern-day regimes like North Korea and China, where alternatives to state-controlled education are non-existent.
Those who oppose school choice are just like those totalitarians in North Korea and China who oppose school choice.
Advocates of publicly-supported school choice by expanding the definition of “public education”, strengthen their position by pointing to the American higher educational system.
American universities that are run by private and religious organizations are already allowed to accept students who use state and federal financial support to subsidize their college expenses because tax money should follow the student.
American universities are the envy of the world, producing graduates who compare favorably with students from other developed nations and attracting a surplus of students from abroad every year.
School choice, in the sense of the use of tax money by institutions not run directly by the state, is already working, with spectacular success at American universities.
The evolution in consciousness will happen and school-choice will eventually be normalized.
Marian Casillas, Ed.D.
Del Rio