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Homeschooling's Harms: Lessons From Economics, George Shepherd

Akron Law Review

For more than two centuries, supporters of school choice programs, such as homeschooling, have attempted to invoke economic analysis. They have argued that school choice will cause public schools to improve because the public schools will no longer be monopolies; the new competition will discipline the public schools to improve. The argument is incorrect, as shown by both economic theory and empirical analysis. Economic theory indicates that, because of special characteristics of the market for education, competition will harm public schools, not help them. Likewise, empirical economic analysis confirms that competition will tend to harm public schools. Indeed, earlier school-choice …