A great article from 2009 by Arianna Huffington I'd not seen before:

Time after time, when the choice has come down to books versus bars, our political leaders have chosen to build bigger prisons rather than figuring out how to have fewer kids in them.

How is it that we are willing to spend so much on kids once they are found guilty of crimes but so little when they are still innocent? What kind of society spends more than 10 times as much to incarcerate a child as it does to educate him?

It's time we start looking at education reform in bold and different ways, to stop protecting little parcels of partisan turf and start thinking outside the box. To consider the possibilities. To look past our own political backyards at what might lie on the other side of the mountain.

What I see on the other side of the mountain is a single-payer education system.

In a single-payer health care plan, the federal government provides coverage for all U.S. citizens and legal residents. Patients don't go to a government doctor -- they just have the government pay the bill.

And that's how it would work with education. In a single-payer education plan, the federal government, in conjunction with the states, would provide an education allotment for every parent of a K-12 child. Parents would then be free to enroll their child in the school of their choice.

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Arianna Huffington

Posted: September 3, 2009 03:07 PM