On Schools and Ovens

Reading today's Times Argus article on high property taxes, I was struck by the remarkable coincidence that my oven had just broken down. That may not sound like a coincidence to you, so let me explain. The article contained the usual conservative commentator saying the solution to high school taxes is to allow schools to compete for students, and the magic of the marketplace will fix everything, giving us better schools for less money. Meanwhile, the oven repairman, when I told him the oven was 10 years old, told me we probably couldn't get parts for it any more. They stop making parts for oven, he said, after 10 years, so people will have to replace them. Competition and the marketplace has ruled oven manufacture for years. Ovens don't get any hotter, they don't make food any tastier. Granted, my oven has an electronic timer that glows green, but otherwise its the same oven my parents used for a long time, before competition encouraged oven makers to stop making parts for them.

Competition and the marketplace won't make our schools better. We may get schools with all the neatest and newest gadgets, and timers that glow green, while the corporate owners figure out how to make people want to spend more on schooling. The reason school taxes are high is simple: the federal government has shifted responsibility for innumerable services onto the local schools. As long as that's happening at the federal level, there will be no relief at the local level.