SCHOOL CHOICE: A deceptive strategy

Brent Regan’s Jan. 17 opinion column claimed that American innovation is stalled by an outdated public education system. He declares that public education needs to change in order to better teach innovation. As a monopoly, however, it has no incentive to change and competition would be the best way to improve the system. “School choice will open the marketplace to new ideas, and the best ideas will percolate to the top.”

Mr. Regan asserts that public education is hindering innovation and a free market education would teach new creative ideas. This, however, doesn’t seem to match the conservative claims that public education is too woke and is wrong for excluding God from schools, implying a preference for having less traditional education and more religion in the curriculum. Unfortunately insufficient tax support forces the public school system to struggle in trying to fulfill education expectations. Regardless, public schools have inspired innovation to grow substantially in technology, medicine, transportation, agriculture, and more. It is a flawed assumption that tax supported religious education will somehow increase STEM related innovations.

Taking tax funding away from public education to pay for specific religious training is a deceptive strategy, more inclined to reverse free thinking and innovation in order to maintain adherence to religious dogma. How many different interpretations of good education should be supported by taxes? Is the “right to choose just common sense” or the further deflation of a public system intended to help everyone?

GARY COFFMAN

Coeur d’Alene