Homeschooling: A Family’s Journey

We predicted last year that

… homeschooling is about to get a lot more persuasive as a result of the financial crisis and inevitable recession. Tax revenues will fall and take school budgets down with them, leading to government spending cuts.

Now, the AP reports: Budget crisis forces deep cuts at Calif. schools

Deep budget cuts are forcing California school districts to lay off thousands of teachers, expand class sizes, close schools, eliminate bus service, cancel summer school programs, and possibly shorten the academic year.

Without a strong economic recovery, which few experts predict, the reduced school funding could last for years, shortchanging millions of students, driving away residents and businesses, and darkening California’s economic future.

Here’s a contrarian view:  The present budget cuts aren’t shortchanging CA students. On the contrary, they might be the best thing for CA students in the long run.

The school systems in CA had been faltering even before the financial crisis. They were faltering because they operate on the same Rust Belt model as the auto companies and the other big, uncompetitive, obsolete institutions that we now see failing all around us.

Homeschoolers have built a new model.  The homeschooling model builds social capital in co-ops and other grass-roots organizations. The homeschooling model makes excellent and effective use of technology.  The homeschooling model is economically efficient, spending far less per pupil than school systems.

What can state governments learn from homeschooling?  They can learn the same things that industry has had to learn: big bureaucracies are inefficient, ineffective, and unsuited to the 21st century.  They can learn that empowering people works.  They can learn that they have a choice to make.

On the one hand, they can choose to preserve the economic perks of such interest groups as teachers unions and school administrators at the expense of students. On the other hand, they can take empowerment as their guiding principle, learn from homeschooling, and devolve esponsibility for education to parents.  Using fewer tax revenues than they have spent on schools, they can encourage forms of experimentation and innovation that can lead to a better system.

The financial crisis makes it clear that business as usual can’t continue.  In fact, if the financial crisis breaks the backs of the interest groups that have exploited school budgets for their own economic advantage, and leads to approaches more like homeschooling, it will prove to be a salutary example of what Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called “Creative Destruction” and the country will be better for it.

(Greg)

Share/Save