Dear Nevada Legislator:
For every study showing children are doing better in private schools than in public schools, someone will produce a study discounting the results or showing the opposite. But that’s not really the issue. The real question is who gets to decide?
Simply put, it should be the child’s parents or guardians. If we trust parents and guardians to choose their child’s doctor and dentist, shouldn’t we trust them to choose their child’s teacher?
Education today is not only a right, but compulsory. However, just because providing an education is a compelling community interest and schooling is mandatory doesn’t mean the government should have a virtual monopoly on providing the service.
For example, the government provides food stamps rather than operating government-run grocery stores. The objective is to provide food, not super-markets. Likewise, the compelling community interest is in providing children with an education, not schools.
AJR 4 would allow the citizens of Nevada to vote on whether or not the state should provide parents not only the right to choose which school their children attend, public or private, but the financial means, especially for poor and working-class families, through education tax rebates to exercise that right.
Citizen Outreach will be including AJR 4 in our 2009 Ratings of the Legislature.
Absent a recorded floor vote in one or both houses of the Legislature on AJR 4, we will be rating co-sponsorship of this critically important education reform and parental rights bill. The main sponsor of AJR 4 is Assemblyman Ed Goedhart. Please contact his office to sign on as a co-sponsor.
Sincerely yours,
Chuck Muth
President, Citizen Outreach
