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Comment by mkoubaa | Hacker News Reader

We don't have to deal with the consequences of failed public schools?

Problems with both education systems can exist at the same time. As a society, we can try to address the issues with both home schooling and the public education system, not just one or the other.

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Of course we do. But I don't think pulling kids out of public schools and then demanding that your tax money be diverted away from public schools because you aren't using them is going to fix them.

It does sound like a good plan to promote if your goal is to dismantle the public education system though.

That's a bit of a straw man, I don't mind if my tax money goes to educating my child's peers.

That’s great. But there are a lot of political pushes for things like voucher programs trying to pull money away from public education in favor of private options.

If people want to homeschool or private school while still supporting the public school system I take no issue with that.

It seems to make sense to pay for the school you are using. Be it public, private or homeschooling If schools have been failing to prepare students for reality like some Baltimore schools, those schools losing students until they eventually shut down due to a lack of enrollment is the best fate for those bottom 20% of schools. It's bad to support and continue the existence of a school who cannot teach students to meet reading writing math or science expectations/Test scores

We all benefit from the existence of good public education, even if our own children do not use it. Cutting funding to government programs that are important to society because those programs clearly need help and reform also isn't the way to fix them.

Of course we do. But we can address public schooling issues with policy. We can’t use policy to make parents into good teachers.

Policy can and has done both positive and negative things to public schools. I wouldn't bet the farm on the next increment of policy going one way or the other

> But we can address public schooling issues with policy.

Available evidence indicates that hasn't been working very well lately.

Or, to put it another way, if we can address it with policy, we can make it worse with policy. Do you trust the competence of the policy makers? Do you trust the competence of those who vote for the policy makers? If you're going to trust them, then you probably might as well trust the homeschoolers too.

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