Let districts and private schools compete for contracts

For those who believe competition is the only way to improve education, I have a solution: Let school districts compete with private schools for the contracts.

It would establish a level playing field necessary to have fair competition between public and private schools and create more efficient and cost-effective schools all around.

The Legislature could put the delivery of education out for bid and invite local school districts and private schools to bid on the contract. It would eliminate the need for controversial schemes such as tuition tax credits, business tax breaks and scholarships for children with certain disabilities. It would also reduce the plethora of laws and regulations legislators have to pass to assure accountability since competition, they believe, would create the efficiencies desired, and it would reduce the number of staff needed to prepare reports. It would certainly reduce the bureaucratic red tape now keeping educators busy rather than educating children.

Making public policy is a tough job because it's not a matter of choosing right from wrong. Rather, it is looking at opposing views where there are no clear answers, and why legislators are often accused of having double standards. Almost all legislators rail against big government and too many regulations and extol the virtues of privatization and free enterprise. They claim adherence to principles such as fairness, honesty, efficiency, promoting the public good and the rule of law. Those are worthy principles and standards for public policymaking.

Legislators seem eager to apply them in helping businesses succeed. They provide incentives and work to eliminate regulations that could impede innovation.

Yet, when it comes to education, it looks like those principles are ignored. Legislators impose more government control on local schools, overburden them with needless regulations, target money for programs and demand volumes of reports to assure accountability.

One school district alone finds that it has to submit over 140 reports to state and federal governments. Seldom does anyone read them or follow through on the findings in the reports.

If legislators really believe in local control and less government, then letting local school districts compete with private schools just might be the answer. The Legislature, according to the state constitution, is charged with the responsibility for the "establishment and maintenance of the state's education systems including . . . a public education system . . . open to all children of the state . . . free from sectarian control." As such, it has the power to decide how best to deliver education to all children.