Equal Opportunity in Education

Our three most basic rights are the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or in more concrete language, of self-determination. These truths were held by the founders of our nation to be self-evident. From these three stem each of our other rights. The State has five basic responsibilities: to establish Justice, to insure domestic Tranquility, to provide for the common defense, to promote the general Welfare, and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our Posterity. In order to determine our course of action in each of these responsibilities, we must consider the rights of the people.

In order to establish Justice in the State, the State must ensure a state of equal opportunity. While it is not just to enforce egalitarianism in distribution of wealth, for not all are equal in ability, effort, and merit, there must be an equality of opportunity to ensure that success or failure of an individual is his or her sole responsibility. The most basic, and sure way to ensure equal opportunity to wealth is to ensure the State's protection of the right to equal opportunity to education. Because authority over education is reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment, the states must recognize their responsibility in this. The right to equal opportunity to education does not necessarily mean to ensure that each student receives an equal education, for this is at odds with a parent's right to choice and determination for their children. Instead, the State must ensure that each student can receive an equally valuable education from each, the State public education system, the private sector education system, and from home school education. It is important to recognize that parents have broad rights of determination over their children; however, a parent has no right to cause his or her children harm. To deprive a child of a valuable education is one of the greatest harms that can be done to that child.

In order to equalize value of the public education, the State must ensure that each independent school district is funded equally and that strict spending guidelines be placed on the schools to prevent waste. While dollars spent per student is not the only factor in determining the effectiveness of education, it is a primary factor. Property taxes assessed and collected for the public schools should be equally distributed per student to the students of the public school system. This will allow each school district the ability to ensure they are able to fairly compensate their teachers, to hire enough teachers, and to construct ample classroom space for each student. Parents, also, should be permitted to allow their children to attend any public school to which they are willing to provide transportation to their children. It may seem undesirable to some that their children should not receive the full benefit of the tax dollars assessed on their properties, but in all actuality, an equalization of school spending will encourage competition among schools for attendance. If schools are paid by number of students in attendance and students may attend any school their parents choose, they will work to produce the best educational environment in order to attract more students. Caps on students from outside the school district may be required in order to ensure that schools do not grow too quickly, but these caps should be slowly relaxed as school attendance increases. Most importantly, the State must never lower the standard of public school education in order to bring more children above the standard. Rather, the State must work to bring more children above the existing standard. The State does our children no favors by decreasing the difficulty of their education.

In order to equalize value of the private sector education, the State must enforce strict guidelines for certification of private school curriculum and teachers. While they must be free to exceed the standard of the public education, they cannot be permitted to sink below it. In addition, a school voucher system should be put into place in order to allow a broader access to the private sector education system. By this, I mean that should parents decide to remove their children from the public school system and place them into private education, the State will provide a fixed monetary sum toward that child's private school tuition. This will further broaden parents' right to choice in their children's educations -- parents who may have been unable to afford private school education without vouchers could then afford it with them. In addition to allowing broader access to a higher standard of education, vouchers will remove students from public school classrooms, increasing the number of dollars spent per student and reducing the number of students per classroom in the public schools, thus further increasing the value of public school education for those students whose parents are still unable or unwilling to place their children into private education.

Most importantly, in order to equalize value of home school education, the State must enforce standards just as strict in home schooling as in the public sector. Parents wishing to home school their children must select a curriculum provided by an institution certified by the State and the student must be required to demonstrate proficiency in that curriculum. All effort must be made to prevent scholastic dishonesty in the home school system, for it is all too easy for a home school student in today's system to cheat his or her way to a diploma equal in value to that of a public or private school. It cannot be stressed enough that to allow our students to do this is to do them great harm.

No one can force a student to learn; that is the student's choice. However, the opportunity to learn must be provided to each student, and to each student equally in order to ensure that justice is maintained -- and not only this, but in order to ensure that our future is secure. We must not allow our standard of education to continue to decline. The solution is not to lower the passing score, but rather to increase our students' opportunity to achieve and succeed.