The Pub Discussion Board

You're wrong.   

Hey, you told me to tell you.  You didn't say I had to actually think you were wrong... 

Eric

Hence where the competition comes in, Storymaster.

Any system where there was both choice, and federal funding, would mean that the school money was put in the hands of the parents.  (Not literally, obviously, but in the form of a voucher that they would give to the school of their choice.)  HOWEVER:  There is nothing saying that the school would accept the voucher as payment in full.

And the truth is that our schools waste a shitload of money.  More can be done with far less, if efficiency is one of the goals.  It isn't in our school systems, because there are too many bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

In your example of a small rural district... all the requirements get smaller, too.  A large urban school will have two or three administrators, a large office staff, a few dozen teachers, and a couple thousand students.  In a small, rural school, you would have a single administrator, maybe one office worker, probably less than ten teachers, and maybe a few hundred students.  What is required in these smaller facilities is flexible personnel: teachers capable of teaching more than one subject.  The facility/equipment costs will be commensurately smaller, because the school is smaller.

It could work, but I don't see it happening, unfortunately.

Eric