Empower parents with education

In “Pushing back against education ‘reform’” [Jan. 20 Forefront], Doug Masson seems to lump innovations such as charter schools in with vouchers and derides both. Masson indicates that “money is a driving force behind the privatization movement” and we are left to think money is no factor in maintaining a dying “business plan” of state-owned “public schools.”

So, only the change agents are greedy. Certainly not the Indiana State Teachers Association.

For the past 100 years or so, America has believed it to be important to have an educated populace and to guarantee that, taxes would be levied and schools built and owned by the people in the aggregate. Yet, it is this model which is failing due to the weight of over-regulation at both the national and state level and with a one-size-fits-all mentality.

What we see from the education establishment is total resistance to changing a failing business model, and it will hear nothing of intelligent alternatives. Vouchers would go to public or private schools given the imprimatur of the state, and who cares whether the institution is faith-based or faithless, which perfectly describes the typical public school today.

It is time to let parents make decisions for their children on the school they go to and get the establishment out of it because, despite what they think, they aren’t necessarily smarter than any given parent and the Good Lord knows they sure don’t love the kids more than the parents!

____________

John L. Sorg, McCordsville