I'm in Indiana, and there are/were some bills in the State Congress that if passed would basically destroy public education. Though that's not what the supporters would say of course. The private schools are doing quite well, because they're exempt from a lot of the insanity that is required testing, etc.
What I hear from people in the local school district right now tells me that the school district is already failing. They're short teachers (because the pay is terrible and the parents worse), they had to change the start times for school in the middle of the school year because they couldn't find enough bus drivers. They're basically begging for money because they've lost so much funding from the state over the past decade. And there's a decent number of people that I'm hearing don't want to vote for the referendum.
The consequences are going to be terrible though. The good employers will leave, because they need a skilled and educated workforce, and they won't have it. It's not just Indiana though. To varying extents, its the entire country. As much as I value public education, I can imagine a time where anyone who has the slightly opportunity will go to private schools or a very select few public districts - because the alternative is so bad you might as well not go to school at all.
If we want to avoid that, we have to triple or quadruple teacher pay, and everyone else involved in education, from the bus drivers to the aides to the lunch monitors. We need to attract the best to be teachers, and we do that in part by paying them well. We have to standardize grade level requirements, and anyone who doesn't meet those requirements has tutoring, remedial courses, or are simply held back to repeat the grade. And the TEACHER decides what's appropriate - not the parents. We have to have trained and experienced educators and child development experts in charge of curriculum, and NO ONE is able to overrule them. Parental choice will look like free public school and you don't get to exempt kids from topics or classes or you pay through the nose for private schooling and get to choose what topics get taught/not taught. Going to public school should cost $0. No book fees, no lunch fees, free. Exempting your child from learning about the Holocaust or sex ed should not be an option. And if the kid misses that day, there's make up work to ensure they learn it anyway. There should be way more counselors and social workers in schools than there are currently. Every child should have initial evaluations to screen for potential learning disabilities or other issues, and children for whom there are concerns should have complete evaluation and testing to identify any problems, followed by appropriate interventions.
