You forget that the government already has oversight on private schools. Every child has to take the same year-end standarized test that the public schooler does.
As a homeschooler, I still took every single major public school test. That's how we get data that shows that private/homeschoolers have much better grades that public schoolers.
The ultimate goal of a company is to ensure profitability. And the way to ensure profitability is to produce a product that is satisfactory for their consumer, so that they buy their product. In this case, it's education. If a school offers education that is poor, no one would 'buy' the product, and go elsewhere, thus bankrupting the company.
There are various state, and national school tests that most, or all students take:
- ACTs
- SATs
- State-wide tests
So the precedents are already there for standardized testing in private/home situations.
And you also assume that the government, if education was privatized, would not have a role. They always would, in the same way they do with the FDA, EPA, or other organizations: They would act as a consumer watchdog, ensuring that education was good.
Oh, and culture wars in the schools? They're already there. Look at universities and the studies that have been done with how they skew students thinking.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
