Subsidiarity Due For Comeback

The Catholic principle of subsidiarity, whereby that level of government closest to the problem is the one best-equipped to deal with it, may be viewed as quaint but in public education, its inverse could be seen as disastrous. “The 20th century was marked by dramatic consolidation of school districts in the United States,” Tom Loveless and Katharyn Field of the Brookings Institution found. “As the number of districts shrank from 117,000 in 1940 to 15,000 in 2000, the size of districts ballooned.”

“The average district served 217 children in 1940, as opposed to 3,000 in 2000.” Their research is quoted in a new report by the Heartland Institute, written by Joseph L. Bast and Joy Pullmann.

“In a 2012 poll conducted by Braun Research, Inc., 37 percent of parents said they would prefer to send their children to private schools yet fewer than 10 percent of parents do,” Bast and Pullmann write. “Seventy-one percent of mothers and 56 percent of Americans favor school vouchers.”

“In the Washington, D. C. area, almost three-quarters of those polled support the local voucher program, and it had a parental satisfaction rate of more than 90 percent.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
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