Berner goes on to offer examples from the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, and many other countries that support a broad variety of schools. In a pluralistic system, students or their parents are allowed to choose the type of school that their child will attend. The school may be religious, it may have a specific pedagogical practice, or may have various other defining features, but it will still receive public funds.

Berner suggests that the key to a pluralistic education system is that there must be some form of accountability for all schools, even private ones.

While I may not completely agree with Berner on the extent to which the government should regulate private schools, her paper offers an excellent overview of what educational pluralism is, the perceived obstacles to pluralism in the United States, and an overview of compelling educational research.

To learn more, give her paper a read or check out her recent op-ed on the matter here.

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Education is more than teaching the three Rs; it is inherently value-laden. Education gets at our deep-seated values. Schools touch on these explicitly in what they choose to teach or not to teach. They also touch on these values in the little things they do. When we insist students call teachers Mr. or Mrs., for instance, we teach them to respect authority. When we recite the pledge of allegiance, we are inculcating reverence for our country. In almost every action, whether little or big, our schools are imparting values to our children.

This connection between schools and values is a problem in our public education system, which typically assigns students to schools. It means that if I want my values taught in the school, I must impose them on everyone else. As Vance Randall, an education professor at Brigham Young University, has written, “A major cost inherent in the establishment of state-sponsored schools in America was an educational program with conflict built into the system.”

But not every country has designed their system like ours. In Australia, Ireland, Belgium, and most other industrialized nations, the government provides some funding to non-governmental (private) schools. They allow for broader choice.

In the United States our system developed differently. Beginning in the mid to late 1800s, there was a push for the Common School. The leading lights of those days, however, such as Horace Mann, looked at the waves of immigrants coming into the country, the isolated rural villages teaching students in Polish or German, and thought that this decentralized system was chaos. They devised plans for a new system – a Common School System. As historian David Tyack put it in his 1975 book, “They tried to design, in short, the one best system.”

For over a hundred years now, America has been trying to build and refine this one best system. But it won’t work—because there is no single, best system. We disagree on which values we want imparted to our children. We also disagree on which instructional practices we want in our schools; I want direct instruction, you want discovery learning. We cannot both have our way in the traditional system. Either I win and you lose, or vice versa.

That is why school choice is good in and of itself. It recognizes that in our pluralistic society, we do not need to force one set of values and instruction on children. Instead, we can allow people—even people we disagree with—to voluntarily associate with one another and to choose the type of school that fits their child and their values.

We should not have to check our values at the schoolhouse door as a condition for receiving a public education. If we cherish freedom of thought, of expression, and of association—if we care about diversity—it hardly seems possible that we can cultivate those values by denying families the opportunity to pursue diverse educational opportunities that shape the thoughts and develop the minds of their children.

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When I was driving into work today, I heard a story on NPR about how a private company is turning a dilapidated part of the French Palace of Versailles, the Hôtel du Grand Contrôle, into a luxury hotel. According to the story:

[Deputy Administrator for the Palace of Versailles] Hautchamp says Versailles doesn’t have the $7 million it will take to restore the building, which is why it turned to Belgian hotel company Ivy International. The company will renovate the mansion and turn its 23 bedrooms into a luxury hotel.

A percentage of the profits will be paid back to the Palace of Versailles in rent. The restoration is the first in a series of commercial projects aimed at saving French monuments.

Not only is this a rare opportunity to apply knowledge from my French major in a professional capacity (it’s the plight of the liberal arts major, n’est-ce pas?), this story illustrates how practical solutions to public policy problems exist in the private sector.

Turning Versailles into a hotel will have many positive consequences. More people will be able to enjoy the building than they do in the status quo, or if it were in ruins. Additionally, taxpayers won’t be forced to pay for the restoration, nor will the restoration compete with other government programs for funds. Another positive consequence is that the building and its history will be preserved. The following quote in the article particularly illustrates this point:

“It surprised me at first,” Denise Mosset says. “But if we don’t have the money to restore it, this is better than letting it fall into ruin.”

This story is particularly relevant to Saint Louis, which has beautiful architecture, limited financial resources, and competing needs for these resources. The city of Versailles found a free-market solution to historic preservation, and the city of Saint Louis would be wise to investigate the same. Policymakers in Missouri could learn a lot from the French.

Additionally, and parenthetically, this story represents how, in free economies, individuals can improve their quality of consumption over time. In the past, Versailles was a building that could only be enjoyed by the super elite (the French monarchy). In the present, it will be enjoyed by non-elite guests every day.

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Anheuser-Busch InBev has on tap an effort to lessen the burden of the city’s earnings tax, according to knowledgeable sources.

One source said the brewery has talked with the Bryan Cave law firm about representing them in the effort. Bryan Cave cited client confidentiality when questioned about the subject.

A call to acting City Counselor Steve Kovac, whose office would handle the matter for the city, has not been returned.

One source said the brewery is trying to “avoid a pay cut for the Brazilians coming to town.” InBev, which bought the brewery, is based in Belgium, but many of its top executives are from Brazil.

The 1 percent tax, which affects those who work in the city, represents a big lug for the city, and the brewery was identified in a financial report for fiscal 2008 as the No. 1 source of this tax in the city. Its payment totaled $7.39 million, or 4.2 percent of all earnings and payroll tax collected by the city.

Now, I’m sure that the chances of actually overturning the tax are fairly slim, but I love their ambition of lowering taxes for everyone. Of course, I say this without having read any of the legal theory underpinning the firm’s purported argument, because Bryan Cave is doing its proper legal duty and keeping its mouth shut. I’ll just have to wait with baited breath. There are, however, a few pieces on the Show-Me Institute’s website demonstrating that eliminating the earnings tax makes good economic sense.

Even if the 1-percent tax were struck down, though, I’m sure city officials would try to find another way to get “their” money.

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However, tough economic times are also just about the only time there is a real opportunity to reduce the number of government employees at all. When times are good and budgets fat, nobody says, “Hey, jobs are easy to come by; let’s fire the worst 10 percent of the public payroll and reduce both the size of government and the tax burden, right here and now!” Sometimes, you get a combination of factors that actually helps to make some reductions successful, as was the case for Gov. Blunt. He deserves great credit for that, even though it was nothing quite like the radical reduction in non-public-safety-related government employees that we need right now, in my opinion.

I don’t mean to single out Missouri state government employees, in contrast to local, state, or federal bureaucrats thoughout the county — which gets me to the point of this post. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a hysterical article about government workers in Belgium, and their abuse of sick leave. Read the whole thing.

It’s funny in many ways, but in a bigger way, it is just pathetic. This is what socialism (or quasi-socialism) does to people: It takes their initiative away, and any sense they might have of controlling their own destiny, all in the name of equality and fairness. So, you eventually get a nation of losers who can’t go to work because they are depressed that their girlfriend dumped them. No wonder InBev is actually run by Brazilians. …

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