I’m just a little worried about the minority of children whose parents wouldn’t pay for their schooling. I think it is unfair to punish someone for another person’s mistakes, in this case punishing a child for their parents’ mistake of not sending them to school.

Please note that I believe a liberal society (liberal in the classic sense of the word) would provide publicly funded education as a safety net. That said, I think we are all mistaken if we think only the rich will be educated in a scenario where we have a competitive market. If you look at the statistics, it is the poor that try hardest to provide an education to their children, because they know that education is the great equalizer. Our current system, which creates such mediocrity for the poor in our education system, is the anti-thesis of equality of opportunity. If you are wealthy, you can send your children for a fantastic education. If you are poor, you send your children for the mediocre dregs that are our public schools.

I believe you’re making a very fundamental error in assuming that only the “rich” would be able to afford schooling were the public school system not present. The tremendous amount of money taken out of the economy by the public school system would be more than enough to ensure each and every child a good education in a vibrant marketplace. Also, a vibrant education marketplace would preclude, through market forces, severe dysfunction like that which plagues many public schools.

All in all, if the transition is made well (not like CA’s “deregulation” of energy), moving to a mostly private school system would produce significant improvements in education.

I think her point was more about equal opportunity than simply education. Without public schools, only rich people’s children would be educated, and would then become rich and further the cycle. The children of middle class parents wouldn’t have the opportunity to succeed in a society in which they had no access to education.