Why We Home School (Continued)

In 2009, American public schools spent on average $10,499, according to the US Census Bureau, more than any other country.  By now it's more like $12,000 per student per year.  Keep in mind that American private schools charge $8,549 for tuition on average.  In that same year, American students ranked... 

...about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. 

Obviously, we don't get our money's worth.  But wait, it gets worse.

Not content with wasting your money and mine on a sub-standard education, public schools often forego education completely and substitute political indoctrination.

A Virginia middle school teacher recently forced his students to support President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign by conducting opposition research in class against the Republican presidential candidates. 

The 8th grade students, who attend Liberty Middle School in Fairfax County, were required to seek out the vulnerabilities of Republican presidential hopefuls and forward them to the Obama campaign. 

“This assignment was just creepy beyond belief — like something out of East Germany during the Cold War,” one frustrated father, who asked for his family to remain anonymous, told The Daily Caller.

... 

“I was shocked that a school teacher would so blatantly politicize the curriculum of a middle school classroom,” the parent said. “I asked [my child] if a similar assignment had been handed out to examine the background and positions of President Obama to see if the teacher was at least being bipartisan.” 

No similar assignment was given to research Obama’s history, identify his weaknesses or pass them along to the Republican candidates.

When I was in second grade in then-Communist Nicaragua, my Communist teachers forced me to undergo Communist indoctrination.  Needless to say, It didn't take.  In fact, it backfired and made me particularly hostile to political indoctrination of children in schools.

My parents gave up the life they built in Nicaragua and suffered all kinds of uncertainty and hardship in a new country where they didn't even speak the language to escape that kind of political indoctrination.  I'll be damned if I voluntarily subject my children to it.

Why do so many parents put up with this garbage?  Even if their kids' teachers don't pull this kind of stunt, why do they put up with public schools' obvious waste of money?  When public schools come around begging for more money, why don't more parents ask; "what did you do with the $12,000 per student you got last year?"  Why don't more parents demand school choice, which would increase competition among schools and force them to improve?

I don't get it.