Charge parents for public school

By Brian Crosby

With states across the country facing huge budget deficits and potential devastating cuts to services, the time has come to start charging parents tuition for their children’s public school education.

If parents of the 47 million students in the United States who attend kindergarten through 12th grade were billed $360 per child per year — that’s $2 a day for each of the 180 days of instruction — nearly $17 billion would be generated.

Can half of America’s parents afford $360 per year for each of their children?

For the price of a cup of coffee, a child can get educated for a day. For the price of a movie ticket, a child can get educated for a week.

For the price of a cellular phone bill, a child can get educated for a month. For the price of a video game console, a child can get educated for an entire year.

Parents spend hundreds of dollars on iPods and cellphones for their children. Is $360 going to break their backs?

However, let’s say only half of the parents can foot the bill. That still leaves $8.5 billion going to public schools.

Cutting a week out of the skimpy school calendar as some have proposed as a way to save money is not the solution to a fiscal crisis, though if the week cut out was the one for state testing, many teachers and students wouldn’t mind.

Already American children attend school fewer days than most other industrialized nations. While a free education for all is a wonderful gift, it’s simply not possible anymore.

There should be no sticker shock about this. Parents today pay for athletic uniforms, musical instruments, lab fees, school-embossed clothing, and field trips

Plus, they get nickeled and dimed to death from schools throughout the year to donate money for art and music programs, to get their cars washed for athletic programs, to consume cardboard pizza so that a few dollars will go to the schools. Children would no longer have to go begging relatives and neighbors to buy coupon books.

For years community colleges charged no tuition. Then, during a financial crisis, they started implementing nominal fees such as $50 per semester. “How dare they” demonstrations broke out proclaiming the beginning of the end of community colleges.

Well, today the colleges have more students than ever before, despite charging $15, $20 or $25 per unit. For an average class load of 15 units, the cost of one semester of community college is a few hundred dollars — not a bad deal. Nearly half of community college students get their tuition waived anyway because of their low-income status.

Attaching a price to “free” services will help students and parents understand the value of education. Psychologically it’s interesting how people view something that is free: They tend to place less value on it than if they have to pay for it.

Walk onto campuses right after lunch, especially at high schools, and notice the garbage strewn around. Students would less likely trash their schools knowing their parents had a vested interest in the property.

Look, nobody enjoys paying for services that used to be free. However, a generation of people has grown up with cable television and doesn’t even remember that TV used to cost nothing. Paying $360 a year for a child’s education is half of what the average person spends on watching television.

Which is more important?


Brian Crosby, a National Board Certified Teacher, is a veteran high school English teacher, author of “Smart Kids, Bad Schools: 38 Ways to Save America’s Future.” He is founder of the American Education Association and writes a blog at brian-crosby.com.