The Mainstream Coalition

Sunday, I sat in on a panel discussion sponsored by the Mainstream Coalition. The topics ranged from the separation of church and state to our relationship to Israel. Apparently the main focus of the Coalition is support of public education including increased finding and careful separation of religion and government.

How do we make them see that their goals are contradictory?

A substantial number of parents want their kids to be bible believers and to hear no contradictory facts and that is their right. This is the reason for the vehement battle over teaching evolution vs. Creation. What this battle really teaches us is that public education and religious freedom are simply not compatible.

The constitution says that there shall be no establishment of religion but it also says that there should be no laws interfering with the free exercise of religion. How do you protect the free exercise of religion for a fundamentalist Christian at the same time that you do not provide support for a religion with tax funds? As long as you run a tax supported government school system you simply cannot meet both goals.

The way to satisfy both requirements is to develop a program of choice in education. Then each parent can send his kid and the tax money that supports the school to the school that teaches what he wants his kid to learn. So tell my why the Mainstream Coalition is opposed to school choice?

Of course there will be many more benefits than just support of religious freedom.

Education, like any other service or commodity, gets better and cheaper when it is supplied by a competitive market. On the other hand, the Coalition believes, in a demonstration of the power of faith over experience, that all we need to make education better is more money.

Why would one expect that school board managers would use the extra money in the most efficient way? If anything, they have incentive to do poorly since they can use poor test results to ask for still more money. This is a classic example of adverse incentives. A private school manager, on the other hand, has every incentive to do the best job possible. He has to worry about dissatisfied parents removing their kids AND their money to some other school that does better.

Choice in education will cut the cost of education, probably in half. We just might be able to get government out of education all together which will mean a huge reduction in state taxes.