State of Education -

I am utterly fascinated by a current hot topic in Arkansas...education. And to be clear, education itself is not necessarily the topic of discussion and debate, the real topic is the government school system. There are two sides to this coin and whether the coin lands on heads or tails, there is a benefit for me.

I am an unashamed apologist for homeschooling as the right way for parents to train children in the way that they should go. So, I'm ultimately interested in less government involvement in affairs that God has assigned to the family. And right now, there is a fierce debate in Arkansas, especially within the government, regarding the future of the government school system.

Arkansas is ranked very low nationwide for its educational system and the state's supreme court recently demanded reform of some sort. So there is widespread awareness in the state that the government is not getting the job done. Yippee.

So the government's two solutions from which to choose: 1) consolidation: smaller school districts join others so that the size of each school justifies the cost associated with running the school, or 2) raise taxes to fund increased opportunities for schools which are suffering.

Option 1 means significantly fewer government schools statewide. This is good in itself, but also because it may cause families to consider alternatives rather than sending their child to the next town for school everyday.
Option 2 means that educational performance will probably remain stagnant and increased taxes will dissuade overall economic growth. Industrial and commercial growth will be hindered due to the naturally unattractive tax increase, which means less tax income to the state for other government growth.

Simply put, the debate is: Should we get rid of a lot of government schools? or Should we limit the government's overall growth? I love it.