Pisslam is the main enemy.
Onto public schools, they originated with Charlemagne, and do help. Clearly, in the States, it hasn't. If there was a good government, anyone would be happy to fund them.
2 principal benefits: a more useful population (+wealth)
: less child gangs (-crime +population growth)
Tag is correct that it also contributes to population growth. Would you, Mr. Lewinsky stinks, be in favor of cutting payouts to new mothers (excluding mudrats)? How about tax reductions for young married couples? If people can't afford to have kids, they'll have less kids. I think we should cut funding to a lot of things in Israel, but rapid population growth is not one of them. Public elementary schools pay themselves off everywhere, and high schools do so usually. Tag is incorrect that the money otherwise spent on the cigars is, in fact, going. It is a healthy reinvestment, and the population growth is simply an additional benefit that is morally reprehensible not to value. By the time they are 20, they will be able to, at worst, work at Mcdonalds, a skill they would not have otherwise. It can be argued that it will also lead to a reduction in crime if workers are able to perform many types of jobs.
I agree that taxation should be minimal, but strongly support higher payouts to schools. People that sign up for low-paying public school teacher jobs typically have insane communist agenda they like to spread, and schools should instead make the best teachers want the jobs, because nothing is as valuable as a child's education. Every dollar spent is doubled in their lifetime, and multiplied heavily throughout their lives.
Corruption is common, so local governments should have control over it. The teachers should be known in town hall by the citizens of the town, further increasing the prestige appeal of teaching jobs, and ensuring only the best are teaching our kids (G-d willing, may I have some of my own one day), it would also make curriculum easier to be controlled by concerned parents. The one issue of curriculum is that local communities making their own history tests after the standardized information to be tested in exams can lead to local divides, but federal control of history courses can lead to indoctrination, and the most serious form of it, as evidenced by Israeli schools. There is also a massive benefit to nationalist sentiment when a nation knows a shared history, so I am not sure which side to go with in this dilema.
Overall, my position is that feds=protect+ punish
local gov= infastructure+ services
You may as well propose to eliminate garbage men.