Acting like a monopoly

Did you catch the article in the Oregonian today about the Portland School District cracking down on parents who lie about where they live to get their kids into a better school?

I love it when this issue surfaces, because it illustrates in such stark terms what is wrong with the school system. Some parents, it turns out, want something better for their children than the failing public school to which they are assigned, and don't have the means to afford tuition or to move to a better area. So they commit the heinous crime of enrolling their child in a better public school than the one the school administrators find it convenient to assign them to.

And what is the reaction of the bureaucracy?:

"There will be consequences if they lie about where they live," said Judy Dauchy, the administrator for the district's enrollment and transfer center.

Only a government monopoly could have this kind of arrogant attitude.

Does the fact that parents want out of one school and into another cause them any concern? It sure wasn't expressed by Ms. Dauchy. No, they want to punish the parents who are rejecting the lousy product they provide.

What should they do? If parents are leaving school A for school B, why not let the management of school B take over school A? Why not punish the people who run school A, rather than punish the customers who want something better for their kids?

Oops, silly me. I used the word "customers." I keep forgetting that in our public school system, parents and students aren't customers, they are captives. Their educational interests are secondary to more important considerations, such as what is convenient for the school district administrators and most of all, the unions.

After all, what could be more inconvenient than parents who won't go along with where their kids are assigned? If they allowed parents to go where they wished, the administrators would have all sorts of management issues such as figuring out how to increase the capacity of the desireable schools, and to adjust the staffing levels of the crappy ones.

That might not even be allowed under the district's own governing document - the collective bargaining contract! It, of course, has final say over such matters, and nothing - certainly not something as unimportant as the desires of parents -- can be allowed to override it.

So, I imagine that Portland School District will have to have an enforcement division. Public employees whose job it is to check up on students by doing home visits to the addresses they claim on their enrollment forms. This is done in other districts.... John Stossell just ran a special on ABC called "Stupid in America" that followed one such investigator and showed how he determined whether a student lived in the home he claimed. The investigator actually went in the house, into the student's bedroom to check if there were clothes in the drawers, books on the shelves, etc, in order to root out those evil parents who don't go along with where the bureuacracy assigns their kids to be uneducated.

By the way, Stossell is coming to Portland this Sunday, speaking at a Cascade Policy Institute dinner.

Imagine the moral foundation of a school system that punishes the parents, rather than the school officials, when a school is so undesireable that parents lie about where they live rather than send their kids there.

This is the school system that is asking for yet another income tax, so it can continue to do business the way it now operates rather than make the structural changes it should have made two decades ago.

Is it any wonder that public support is waning?