Originally published in N.E.O. Liberty Review, Summer 2002.

Schooling is not just one of many social institutions that contribute to the perpetuation of the State. It is probably the one that plays the biggest role. Ohio's schooling system is compulsory, monopolistic and financed by forced contributions. Above all, layers of heavily bloated bureaucracies squander resources.

In addition to the trapping of students into thousands of public school classrooms, Ohio compulsory education law permits private alternatives. There are 91 state-financed chartered schools, hundreds of privately-financed chartered schools, over two hundred State-recognized privately-financed non-chartered schools, at least two State-unrecognized privately-financed non-chartered schools, and thousands of home schools. Not permitted are covert private schools, one of which operates in the Toledo area.

Nearly all of Ohio's Catholic and Islamic schools are chartered non-public schools. Non-chartered, non-public schools, such as Bethlehem Christian School in Orange Village, are mostly Baptist, followed by Non-denominational Christians, Nazarenes, Wesleyans and Pentecostals. It is interesting to note that those with the least historical experience of individual liberty are the first to jump for a government carrot.

In order to maintain their liberty to educate their students the best way they see fit, many State-recognized privately-financed non-chartered schools and most homeschoolers wisely keep their distance from state financing or other services. But the state wields a number of back door approaches toward increasing control. Vouchers, tuition tax credits, and free ROTC programs are just a few of the carrots the State dangles. Temple Christian School in Mansfield is one of more than a dozen non-chartered Baptist schools that host an Air Force ROTC program for its students.

Cleveland's Scholarship and Tutoring Program is an example of a back door approach to state funding of chartered and non-chartered private schools. All but three of the participating private schools are parochial schools, including one Islamic school, but all must not "foster unlawful behavior". Christine Link, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio rightly predicts, "This entanglement will . . . trigger greater governmental scrutiny of these organizations".

In contrast to chartered private schools are chartered public schools or "community schools", which have caught the imagination of many corporations. These are state schools in Ohio's 21 largest urban districts that are funded by the state's per-pupil funding, but operated by non-profit corporations and for-profit corporations rather than the school district.

Constellation Community Schools and White Hat Management are operating a number of publicly funded schools under contract. Even those chartered public schools that are situated behind bars in prisons are seen as a plump and meaty prize - Kentucky Fried Chicken unsuccessfully bid on a prison education contract.

The rhetorical drive for competition in education is giving Ohioans a confused picture of the free market and its purpose. Rather than aid them in their search for educational truths, the competition rhetoric has only steered people in many diverse directions. In some cases, the diversity and confusion have caused many to question the very existence of a competition reform.

According to Dennis O'Keeffe of London's Institute for Economic Affairs, privatization of state production of education where there is no proper exit, no real subjection of output to consumer preference, and above all, no property rights disciplining the use of scarce resources, will not produce increases in productivity or other satisfactory outcomes.

The whole idea behind the rhetoric of privatization in general and competition in education in particular is to keep citizens subservient to the State, while the State's power of resource allocation is increasingly shared with a small corporate elite. Worse, the road to educational serfdom is sign-posted with many examples of H. Ross Perot doublespeak explaining and promoting the blessings.