Why competition, not more resources, solves education inequalities

On March 14th, political commentator Steve Hilton spoke at the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley, the “largest, most successful grass-roots liberty-minded group in California.” Hilton explains why the underfunded local school system is a farcical myth, and that true competition—thus undermining the “public school monopoly”—is our best shield against indoctrination.

Again, I think that the answer here [about indoctrination in local schools] is competition. We have a government school monopoly, and we see the results of that. I mean, the exact people who claim to be motivated by equity as they now call it, racial equity, we have a situation where in California, across the state, a Black child is on average four years’ worth of education behind a white child. That’s what we’ve ended up with. Four years behind. That’s what’s being produced.

And they keep talking about resources. The average cost per pupil of a public school in Los Angeles County is higher than the average cost of a private school place. It’s not that they’re short of money. A huge amount of money has gone in.

And even more, that’s the per pupil cost for the schools. If you look at the amount of money that’s going in from the budget overall, when you look at the luxury pensions and healthcare for the teacher unions, there a huge amount of money is going into our education system. And yet they keep asking, “So, we need more resources, we need more—” No!...

I don’t see a way to solve this unless we break the public school monopoly.

(1:00:06–1:01:48)

Watch the whole thing here.

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