What if we just cut through the morass of programs and take all the money being provided at the federal and state levels and put it into individual student endowment accounts?

The late 1970s in the United States was a time of surprising deregulation.  It was the beginning of the end for the telephone monopolies.  Those inside the regulated industries, and the regulatory agencies, warned of doom and disaster if competition were allowed.  The doomsayers were wrong.  The free market provided solutions that were impossible to forecast.  Competition and the profit motive brought out the best that humans can create.  

Communications solutions today are employing far more people than the old phone monopolies, and are delivering services never dreamed of in that era.  The forecasts of disastrous unemployment and system collapse if the phone monopolies were opened to competition were totally and completely wrong.

K–12 is the phone monopoly of our time.

This seems like the best time in years to truly reform K–12.  However, the focus seems to be on charter schools, leaving behind thousands of students in poorly performing districts, and most proposed solutions leave out homeschooling.

The fundamental problem is the lack of competition.  There is a simple way to introduce it.

Instead of pouring money into the local school monopolies, the solution is to simply endow individual students.  Open the door to the free market in a meaningful way.

We should create an individual educational endowment fund for each K–12 student. Student endowment funds would pay out annually for students who achieved minimum grade-level knowledge, including to the parents of homeschooled students.  The determination of minimum achievement would be through testing, with testing carried out by free-market providers.

Providers for students who did poorly would not be paid, leaving twice the annual amount available next year to educators who could help them catch up.  Seriously underperforming students would accrue several years of catch-up funding, providing extra incentive for the type of personalized attention that would benefit them.  Military veterans teaching small groups of students, developing personal relationships, can change lost kids into enthusiastic young adults.  

Opening educational services to the free market will allow for practical job-related instruction and college-level courses to be included as providers fight for market share.

Instead of leaving dropouts to fend for themselves, the funds should remain on deposit indefinitely, allowing those who get their act together after some time in the adult world to get an education.

A major early effect might be the defunding of some inner-city school systems, with the carry-over of endowment funds providing an incentive to corporate providers.  These districts are a disgrace, but there is almost no way to change them now.  Defunding poor performance in a way that will bring new providers can work.

The new providers will be renting space and transportation for their offerings in most cases from existing school districts.  Just as with telecom deregulation, it will take several years to see the full impact, but requiring minimum accomplishment for payout will protect students and taxpayers as solutions evolve.

Homeschooling pods will explode, but those kids will still participate on local sports teams, and transportation to practice (and back) will also be rented from existing fleets by their parents.  

Special needs students would still have the extra funding, but at an individual student level.

Let's end the monopoly.  Let's open the door to competition.

Image: National Archives.