As it currently stands, the federally funded education system has failed both students, as well as educators, and has no economic incentive to excel. We recognize this lack of incentive comes entirely from the coercive nature of public schooling itself which creates both an institutional and labor monopoly that students are legally bound to attend. It is this system of compulsion which must be broken if our children are to have happy and independent futures.

We therefore stand for a free market in education. To achieve this we propose a full withdrawal of all Federal funding and subsidies from all private and public schools at every level. This amounts to a complete dismantling of the Department of Education.

We recognize that, in a Federalist system, this educational power will fall to the states who can then choose to privatize their educational systems, as we encourage, or remain public without the support of a Federal Department of Education. We fully understand that some states will decide, by whatever means they choose, to maintain a publicly funded system. Should such a system result in the same corruptions on the state and local levels as they have on the federal level, we have full confidence in the American people to choose with their feet, as they have demonstrated throughout history, by migrating from states with onerous laws to those states with laws amendable to a more prosperous and free life. We believe there is no better check on State and Local governmental force than the people’s capacity to move freely within the country. We firmly believe that this mobility will eventually check the ambition of any individual state to continue subsidized schooling leaving more disposable income in the pockets of every family to spend on a more innovative and accessible methods of education for their children.

We assert that a marketplace which is fully open to competition will offer many vast and diverse options and opportunities for families, students, as well as professional educators, to explore. More children will be homeschooled; tutors will offer academic services in a wealth of subjects; teachers will open small, individualized schools; education corporations will be founded and open large-scale schools across the country; and online education will proliferate. There will be religious schools and secular schools, academic programs and vocational schools, big-name prep schools and no-name start-up schools, day schools and after-work night schools and weekend schools. Thousands of options will open and be available for parents and children to choose from.

Furthermore, we recognize that every child is an individual with their own diverse needs and styles of learning. As such, we believe that parents and caregivers are the ones best suited to make decisions regarding every aspect of their children’s education-not the government; and research is increasingly bearing this truth out: that children who are educated outside of the current, federally funded public school system score higher on standardized testing and are more psychologically developed than their publicly educated peers.

By taking schooling out of the Federal government’s hands and placing it where it belongs-in the hands of parents-we accomplish two things: we respect the right of individuals to choose the school they want for themselves and their children, and we definitively terminate the governmental initiation of force in the educational field. We believe this will contribute to freedom of the mind, and vastly improve the educational levels in this country.

As a footnote it is important to remember that this thinking is neither unprecedented, nor untried. Remember that, prior to the imposition of government schooling in the mid-19th century, private education in America was widespread and outstanding; that, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense sold 120,000 copies to a free population of roughly 2.4 million, that the essays of The Federalist were written largely as newspaper editorials to be read by the common man, and that, in the early 19th century, Walter Scott’s novels sold five million copies, the equivalent today of selling sixty million. Before the advent of public schooling America was the most literate country on Earth with more newspapers in single states than existed in all of Europe.

A free market of education has, and will again, deliver superlative levels of literacy and social and material progress in this country.