It is not enough to wait until we can free all the children and taxpayers from the clutch of the school system. The separation process must involve individuals working on solutions that are right for themselves right now, and not rely on the educational bureaucrats suddenly waking up one day, slapping themselves on the forehead and saying, "How could I have been so blind?" Below are ideas that can be undertaken today on an individual basis as well as through group effort.

Encourage and facilitate removing children from tax-funded schools.

• Set up a private scholarship foundation
  
  
• Remove your own children from tax-funded schools
  
  
• Recruit a clergy person to tell the flock of the danger of tax-funded schools, and encourage them to remove their children
  
  
• Set up a school in your neighborhood or church
  
  
• Work in a political field (lobbying, initiatives, etc.) to repeal compulsory attendance legislation.

Reduce tax-financing of government-run schools.

• Perform political action to require that any increase in funding of government-run schools must come from tuition or fees assessed to parents of children in the schools. This would reduce the differential between tax-funded schools and parent-financed schools, and would begin to attack the fabricated right that all children are born with a right to an education at taxpayer expense.
  
  
• Do political action that requires tax-funded schools to reduce by x% each year their use of tax funds. They would have the choice of reducing costs or raising the money from parents or charities.

Download decision making from the fed to the states, from the states to districts, from the districts to schools, and finally from schools to parents.

• Ending all federal financing and involvement in education is a good start. (Note I did not say, "Eliminate Department of Education." It is the financing and involvement that is important, not the department. For example, if we kept the DOE but all workers were volunteers, all moneys they used came from voluntary sources, and their edicts had no binding power whatsoever, it would really cease to exist. Some politician would accept the position of "Secretary," but the position would be so gutted as to be meaningless. Compare this to getting rid of the department by shuffling its staff and funding to other departments. That does no good whatsoever. It is just a decoy reform so politicians can pretend they did something.)
  
  
• End state textbook selection.
  
  
• End state credentialling of teachers.
  
  
• End state "frameworks" and other impositions of curriculum decisions.
  
  
• End state high school graduation requirements
  
  
• End state prohibitions of schools operating solely in a foreign language.

This article is copyrighted by the Alliance for the Separation of School & State. Permission is granted to freely distribute this article as long as this copyright notice is included in its entirety.

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