SCHOOLS: Give private its due

Governor Otter was correct to tell Coeur d’Alene’s Chamber of Commerce that government alone can’t grow the number of high school graduates who are ready for college and career. As a Catholic high school graduate, the governor knows personally that Idaho’s private schools also do a terrific job of educating students.

The governor isn’t alone in knowing this. Twenty-seven percent of Idahoans would choose a private school for their kids as their first schooling choice, yet only 3 percent actually do. Meanwhile, there are between 3,000 and 5,000 open seats in Idaho’s private schools. Evidently, even excellent schools find it challenging to compete with free.

Fortunately, there are solutions available. Education savings accounts and tax credit tuition scholarship programs are just two mechanisms which would make private schools available to middle- and low-income Idahoans.

Choice is the secret sauce to private schools’ success; no one type of school could possibly fit every different type of child. That is why Idaho’s diverse private schools offer an array of choices such as Catholic, evangelical Christian, Waldorf, Montessori, Seventh-day Adventist, classical, International Baccalaureate and more. If families were allowed school spending power, a market for K-12 schooling would come into existence. That would mean an even greater diversity of schools would be built, according to Idahoans’ preferences.

Set Idaho parents free to choose the educations that would best suit their own children. Freedom works. It could make K-12 education work, too.

BRIANA LeCLAIRE

Executive Director

Idaho Federation of

Independent Schools