Government School Property vs Commercial Property

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal of Oct 30 2009, the average school cost per student in New Jersey is about $18,000 per year. Some school districts' per student cost is higher than $18,000 per year!

Imagine how much more efficient the education system would be if it was privatized.

It will never be privatized because of the teachers and other special interest groups; book publishers, athletics, working mothers, and people who just want the government to raise their kids.

Short of privatization, the next best way would be to give each parent in New Jersey a school voucher for $9,000 per child per year. This is half the cost of the government run schools. The parent could keep the money for their expenses and home school their child. Imagine if a parent had two children and $18,000 per year to home school their little ones. How difficult is it to teach a child to read and write?

Parents could also use the $9,000 to hire a tutor or spend it on a private school. They should be able to hire anyone, even someone without a teacher's license, to teach their little ones how to read and write.

Government schools are inefficient because the government school buildings are not used as much as private commercial property. Many government schools are open around 185 short days per year. Compare that to commercial property at a shopping mall, or a WalMart store that is open 365 days per year, almost twice the days of government schools, and WalMart property is operated more hours per day than the government schools. WalMart gets much more utilization from their property than the government schools get from their property. Government can get away with this inefficiency because it operates on force, and force only. WalMart has to operate on persuasion, and against competition. The government schools are monopolies, except the small competition from private schools, where parents have to pay twice for their kids. They pay private tuition and they pay property taxes for the government schools.

Charles Tolleson