I’m surprised to find Ramesh of all people so wedded to thinking inside the box. Haven’t school and state already separated? That’s to say, in the early 19th century, your typical American community had a much more direct stake in the education of its children because the population was less mobile. Those one-room schoolhouses were educating the town’s next generation of farmers and businessmen (not to mention road crews and firemen). That rationale has entirely vanished.

With a highly mobile population, why give your municipality a public monopoly on the education of your children? You don’t do it in any other area of life. If your town has a lousy car dealership, you drive 20 miles to the next town. Just as important, the “local” education is mostly bogus anyway: “local” teachers belong to national unions with statewide terms of employment – in other words, the worst of all worlds, restricting only the consumer’s choice not the supplier’s. A kid who lives in Smallville has to go to Smallville School. But a teacher who lives in Smallville can teach at Metropolis High.

Oh, by the way, it’s true that not all schoolyards are full of crack peddlers and tween skanks. But I’m again surprised to hear Ramesh say that “in most places they do a tolerable job”. Even “good” public school systems (such as my own in New Hampshire) are good mainly in the negative sense of not being actively bad: they’re very undemanding of their pupils.