Don Boudreaux comments on a study done by John Wenders and Andrea Clements. The study shows that taxpayers are saved “big money” when children are home schooled. The article suggests that by children being home schooled benefit the school districts in the long-run by relieving total costs of educating them. An annual potential cost of savings to Nevada, where the study was done, taxpayers can be any where from $24.3 million to $34.6 million attributable to home schooled students. The money saved on those taught at home can be used to enhance the educational opportunities of those who attend public schools.
Business should encourage home schooling because more money will be used to enhance the education of those that attend public schools. Because workers will be more prepared, marginal productivity will increase and business profits will go up. I could be totally off on this one but I’m sure Tufte will let me know, and give me full credit.
1 comment:
The Nevada study is funded by a group in favor of home-schooling, so you shouldn't be surprised that they support it.
Having said that, I have read that study and I don't find it to be particularly biased, so it's financial conclusions are probably fine.
I do think a lot of the discussion on this stuff is wrong-headed though. We ought to be looking at final outcomes, and total costs. Final outcomes are the educational results for home schooling, and the record here is pretty good. As to total costs, claiming that it is saving the state money is an incomplete approach because it doesn't capture the amount the home schooling parents are paying out of pocket.
Probably the most important point to start out from in this debate is that regulated school districts fall into the textbook category of lazy monopolists (that isn't always in a ManEc book, but will usually be in a straight micro book). Lazy monopolists tend to waste a lot of money, and this can be hard to recognize because they waste it a little bit at a time everywhere throughout the operation.
An alternative way of looking at this is if your goal was to create a costly system that would be unable to deliver regular quality improvements, you'd design it like a school district.
This is not to say that the school district structure doesn't have other benefits, just that it will have a fundamental pattern of behavior that is not similar to other institutions.
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