Homeschooling and Economics

Dr. Boudreaux provides an excellent analysis here. We've learned that specialization is very beneficial (as he says, going all the way back to Adam Smith) and that it makes us all wealthier.

I don't build my own car or make my own shoes, so why do I eschew govt. schools when it comes to education? Because they really are that bad. Doing it on my own (homeschooling) or contracting with a private party at additional expense (private school) is by far the preferred option. This shows just how horrid U.S. government schools are.

Dr. Boudreaux notes that in 1998 there were approx. 1.1 million U.S. kids getting homeschooled. One estimate puts the 2002 number at 1,700,000 to 2,100,000 children. It continues to grow.

Lessons from Homeschooling - The Foundation for Economic Education: "The June 28, 1998, New York Times reported that 56 percent of Massachusetts’ up-and-coming teachers failed their basic test in reading and writing. This result means that well over half of Massachusetts’ freshly minted college graduates with degrees in education cannot competently read and write.

Can you guess the response of the Massachusetts State School Board? They re-graded the tests on a curve so that no more than 44 percent would fail/In short, they cheated. They dishonestly, and for totally self-serving reasons, rigged their system so that its own abject failures would be better masked. But camouflaging a beast that grows larger and uglier by the day is difficult.

As shown by the furor that this episode caused in Massachusetts, Americans are increasingly aware that government education specialists in charge of K-12 government schools are lousy educators. This awareness is prompting parents to act rationally in a way that provides the best evidence yet that education bureaucrats cannot educate namely, more and more parents are homeschooling their children. In 1980 only 10,000 children were schooled at home. Today that figure stands at about one million. This means that fully 2 percent of all children are now homeschooled. And this number continues to grow, even though public education is 'free.'"

Technorati Tags:
education public schools homeschooling economics Adam Smith