A Comment on Nicole Asbury, "This school board can’t stop fighting. A Maryland bill aims to fix it", _Washington Post_(ymd = 2022-04-8)

The _Post_ article describes a contest to alter the governance structure of Prince George's County (MD) Public Schools. 

Prince George's County is an interesting county. PGCPS is an interesting district. The US DOE NCES  reports the following:

Maryland 2018-19 K-12 enrollment:  896,827

Maryland 2018 K-12 regular school districts: 24

Prince George's County (MD) Public Schools 2020 enrollment = 131,646

PGCPS 2018-19 revenue per pupil = $18,169

The County is 13% White, 62% Black, 18% Hispanic, and 4% Asian, with a median household income of $84,920

The school district enrollment is 4% white, 57% Black, 34.3% Hispanic, and 2,8% Asian

The _Post_ reporter relates political moves to change the Board from a hybrid elected/appointed Board to an elected Board. Nicole Asbury does not devote many words to the performance issues that motivate parents' or voters' attention. 

My recommendation: change nothing except ...                                                                              Mandate that all schools in PGCPS must hire parents on personal service contracts to provide for their children's education if (a) the parents apply for the contract and (b) the child is at or above age-level expectations on standardized tests of Reading (any language) and Math on or before the start of the contract year (i.e., the school year). Make the contract value equal some fraction 2/3 < a/b < 9/10 of PGCPS $18169 per pupil budget. Make payment contingent on performance at or above age-level expectations on standardized tests of Reading (any language) and Math on or before the end of the contract year.

One contract per child per year.

One contract per parent or parent's designated agent per year.

Parents could then homeschool, hire tutors, extend daycare to age 18, or supplement the contract amount and pay tuition to an independent or parochial school.

If your child's school offers a poor fit for your child's interests and abilities, homeschool. If you cannot homeschool, encourage your child to drop out in school. Tell teachers and administrators that your child has your permission to ignore, politely, all school instructions and to study her own material. Go ahead and accumulate a 0.5 GPA, take the GED and SAT at 16, and attend a community college.

Good luck to the parents of PGCPS.

[Readers of this blog (anyone out there?) may recognize the proposal, Parent Performance Contracting, that I outlined in 2005] 

Another _Post_ reader responded:                                                                                                    "Why?"

My answer: ...   

                                                                                                                                                                  For every locality A the term "the government of A" names the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber). You can, without introducing significant error, model government as a territorially defined extortion racket or as a giant shopping mall operator with its own armed internal security force.

Organized interpersonal violence (i.e., government) makes no positive contribution to the education industry beyond what it contributes to the kitchen utensil industry or to the lawn maintenance industry, an original assignment of title and a stable system of contract law.

Gandhi wrote that parents are the natural teachers of their own children.

Abundant evidence from several lines of investigation supports the following generalizations:

1. As institutions take from individual parents the power to determine for their own children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction, overall system performance falls and

2. Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically-adept parents ("Well, duh!", as my students would say).

People explain social pathologies of urban Black culture as a "legacy of slavery' and in a sense that's true. The NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's facilities (which facilities many speakers of American English call "public schools") give to many normal children no reason to do what schools require. There's a reason that "academic" has become a synonym for "irrelevant". Training an artistically inclined child or a mechanically-inclined child for an academic career using the transcript as like incentive is like teaching a cat to swim using carrots as the reward.

Compulsory unpaid labor is slavery. Slavery is evil.

Twelve years of subordination harms all who endure it.

Homeschool.

Satyagraha.

Ahimsa.