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It is true that parents can get a better public education for their
children by moving to more affluent neighborhoods where the public
schools are typically superior to those in poor neighborhoods. The
demand for better education results in higher prices for houses in areas

with superior public schools, and these higher prices do communicate
some information. But higher house prices reflect a host of desirable
features of a particular neighborhood, and thus give schools much less

information on how to respond appropriately to the educational
preferences in the community than would prices and revenues received
directly from parents, and much less motivation to do so.
As long as government finances schools, the best way to improve

education is by using the information from parents and schools that is
being censored by having schools operated by government.
Governments could provide parents with vouchers that they could spend

on the schools that they believe do the best job educating their children.
Those schools doing the best job, as determined by parents, would
receive the most vouchers and expand by competing away resources

from those schools doing a poor job. Schools would get direct
information in the form of revenue on the educational options parents
prefer, and parents would get direct information on the costs of those

options. And instead of the tendency toward a one-size-fitsall approach,
there would be more educational variety in response to the diversity in
educational preferences.
Those children whose parents, or guardians, are least able to move

to districts with better schools, or to pay for private schooling, would
benefit the most from the educational information that would be
communicated through the market for vouchers. It is not surprising that

African Americans and Hispanics favor educational vouchers by large
majorities Public school officials talk frequently about how they are
making every effort to keep their schools supplied with the latest
information technology and doing all they can to overcome the so-called

“digital divide” so that children in poor neighborhoods benefit just as
much from access to information as those in wealthy schools. But they
do so while actively opposing educational vouchers that would eliminate

the censorship of information that is far more vital to improving the
education of all students, particularly those in the poorest
neighborhoods, than all of the digital doodads the public schools are

obsessing over.