Free The School Revolution by Ron Paul

local government schools can find ways of competing against a comprehensive array of independently financed private-sector alternatives, they will fail tomaintain public support, much like the Postal Service. For the local school districts to do this, they will have to renounce all state and federal funding and thereby renounce state and federal controls. They will have to pull out of regional central school districts. In short, they will have to secede, or opt out.
    Hardly anyone outside the federal government is coming to the defenseof the U.S. Postal System. There is no mass political movement in favor of restoring its complete monopoly over the delivery of first-class mail. In fact, the public would at this point be widely against that. There is no call to inject billions of dollars of federal money into a bailout of the system. There are no such calls, because the system is no longer vital to the lives of most Americans.They will not come to the defense of something they barely appreciate.
    Three developments will reform education: the restoration of family-based education, the restoration of open competition in education, and the development of educational programs that rely on self-teaching and student-run tutorials. In short, the division of labor in education through decentralization. I exploreall three in part 2.
    9  http://bit.ly/USSCschools.

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Family-Based Education
    T he fundamental principle of education is this: families have the final say in the content and structure of education for their children . Parents have ultimate authority institutionally in the field of education until such time as the children reach the age of accountability, which is marked by their decisionto pay for their own educations as legal adults. This is an application of the familiar principle I stated earlier: “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”
    There is only one way that parents can gain authority over the structure and content of education for their children. They must pay for it. Any attempt to transfer the funding of education to some other institution is bynecessity a call for the transfer of some authority over that education to that agency. The more that any outside agency funds the system of education, the less influence parents will have in determining the system’s content and structure. The federal government tries to get this control with a minimal payment. The day that a school district accepts any federal money, it becomes subject to all thefederal regulations. And then, those who pay most of the piper’s bills (local taxpayers) call very few of the tunes.
    Libertarians are fond of the phrase “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Anytime an organization offers to provide something for free, we can be sure this is an attempt on the part of that organization to gain greater control over the institution accepting thefunding. Anytime somebody offers something for free, it’s time to begin a search for the motivations lying behind the offer of financial support. Take a look at previous results of such funding. Examine closely the increase in responsibility and influence that agents of the source of the funding exercised in the administration of the funds. To quote the famous phrase from the movie All the President’sMen , “Follow the money.”
    The principle of parental authority over education is an extension of the principle of parental authority over the lives of their children. Parents bring these children into existence, and they are responsible for their care, feeding, housing, clothing, and training. There can be no separation of responsibility from authority . Any attempt to separateresponsibility from authority is an attempt to transfer authority to some other agency. Parents inevitably lose authority over the content and structure of their children’s education whenever they rely on other institutions to provide funding for that education.
    This seems easy to understand, but the vast