De-fund the Detroit Public Schools | Adam B. Schaeffer | Cato Institute: Commentary

De-fund the Detroit Public Schools | Adam B. Schaeffer | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Detroit is planning on spending almost $1.3 billion in 2009 on this abject failure. That's $13,500 for each student. How much more money and how many more young lives is Michigan willing to sacrifice to this diseased system?

The money for success is there, but we need to give it to parents to spend on good schools of their choice, rather than the politicians and bureaucrats that have created this mess.

With that kind of money, private schools will rush to open seats and expand capacity to accommodate them. With that kind of money, new private schools would have plenty to spend on start-up costs and deliver a good, honest education.

Michigan needs a donation tax credit program to fund private school choice for Detroit's children, like the successful programs that Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Rhode Island, Iowa, and Indiana already enjoy."

"Ten gold-standard studies, which use a method similar to medical drug trials, have analyzed the impact that school choice has on the performance of students who are offered a choice.

The results are decisive; nine out of ten studies find statistically significant positive impacts on at least some students. None finds a negative effect.

School choice also helps the kids who remain in public schools. There are 17 studies that analyze the impact of private school choice on public school performance, and again the conclusion is solidly in favor of choice. Sixteen out of those seventeen studies find that choice actually improves public schools. None finds a negative impact.

And on top of all the academic success, in state after state, study after study, we find that school choice dramatically eases the massive burden on tax payers that has been imposed by inefficient public school districts.

A fiscal analysis of the Cato Institute's broad-based education tax credit program demonstrates that it can save states billions of dollars. Illinois, for instance, could save more than $5.1 billion over the first ten years."