EDUCATION

Education and appropriate proportions of its funding should be given back to the control of local communities and the parents. Parents and children should decide which school best fits their needs. All schools should compete to provide educational excellence. The best schools will have the higher enrollment rates and thus receive more funding. What about the schools that are behind? Either they will want to do as good or better than the better schools and they will compete by invoking higher educational standards that attract more parent and community revenue or they will lose enrollment to the better schools. In either case, the children will get a better education through the competition and accountability of the schools.

The problem with today's system is the loss of accountability the schools should have to the parents and the community. The funding and concealment of poor performance, indoctrinational lobbies and teachers unions like the N.E.A. inhibit the addressing and the solving of the problems of education. There needs to be an overriding emphasis upon the educational structure by involvement of localized, classic P.T.A.s and the like who are more interested in providing the best education. Funding of education by distant and big governments or entities comes with a price of loss of control of education and the vulnerability to their imposed values and standards.

The Commonwealth Party endorses vouchers (without governmental stipulatons upon the receivers) because currently for every student that leaves public school the money removed from the system is less than the revenue put in the system for a single student. Thus, the students who still attend public school have more funding per student and a lower student to teacher ratio. Also in order to survive, the public schools will be forced to impove education in order to keep students in their system. So in the end, everyone can get a better education.

Actually, the best way to acheive all these goals in the end is to dismantle the public schools which are really government controlled schools and instead implement a commercial school system that charges access instead of taxes. The cost would be less due to competitive price pressure and better education would be gained due to competition. This is how the industries and business services work in the real economy and supply all the goods and services we desire. Why should the education product be any different? Private schools are well known for their success and it is the public schools that are in a failing mess. Thus, the commmercial or private option should be considered and parents should be allowed to have their type of educational standards catered to.

Regional/local candidates and constituents of the party are free to propose the educational structure and funding plans for their communities that they feel will best fulfill the freedom of choice, acheive standards, invoke accountability and instill competitive principles for education as described above, perhaps minus the dismantling of public schools wherever there is insurmountable resistance. Yet, the funding and implementation of private and personal educational systems should still be considered as alternatives.

Imposed political correctness should be purged from the universities and a balance should be struck between the freedom of thought and expression of the individual and the preservation of inclusiveness for all at any university sponsored activity or venue.