THE EDUCATION FALSE DILEMMA

Why America Has Enough for Every Child —

and Why Pitting Families Against Each Other Serves No One

Proposed by Natalie M. Fleming

Independent Candidate for U.S. Senate, Idaho

Policy Draft · March 2026

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

America spends approximately $900 billion per year on its military. In 2023 alone, Congress approved $95 billion in foreign military aid — more than the entire annual federal K-12 education budget — in a single supplemental spending bill.

We are not a country that cannot afford to educate its children.

We are a country that has been told, repeatedly and deliberately, that we must choose: public schools or homeschools. Traditional classrooms or learning pods. Teachers’ unions or school choice. As though the education of American children is a zero-sum competition for a shrinking pot of money, rather than a shared national investment we have simply chosen not to make.

This proposal rejects that framing entirely.

Every child in America deserves a fully funded, high-quality education — in whatever setting best serves that child’s learning, family, and circumstances. Public school students deserve well-paid teachers, maintained buildings, current materials, and the resources to serve every learner. Homeschool families deserve real support — curriculum access, co-op funding, testing resources, and recognition that educating a child at home is serious, demanding, valuable work.

We have enough for all of it. We have been choosing not to spend it here.

SECTION I: THE FALSE DILEMMA AND WHO BENEFITS FROM IT

The debate over education funding in America has been deliberately framed as a conflict between two groups of parents: those who send their children to public schools and those who educate them at home or in private settings. Each side is told that money given to the other is money taken from them.

This framing is false. And it is useful to exactly one group of people: those who want neither system to work well.

A well-funded public school system that serves every child — including children with disabilities, children in poverty, children whose first language is not English, children in rural communities with no alternative — is a threat to the political argument that government cannot do anything right. If public schools worked as well as they could with adequate funding, the case for defunding them collapses.

Similarly, homeschool families who receive genuine support — curriculum funding, co-op resources, access to specialists, recognition under the law — become harder to dismiss as fringe or irresponsible. If homeschooling is acknowledged as a legitimate educational path that works for some families, the effort to regulate it out of existence or deny it any public support loses its justification.

The manufactured conflict between these two groups keeps both underfunded and both on the defensive. It keeps parents fighting each other while the money goes elsewhere.

Natalie Fleming rejects this conflict. Not because the differences between public and home education are unreal — they are real, and they matter — but because the premise that we must choose is a lie.

SECTION II: WHAT FULLY FUNDING PUBLIC EDUCATION ACTUALLY MEANS

Public schools in America are chronically, structurally underfunded — and the underfunding is not evenly distributed.

Because most public school funding comes from local property taxes, schools in wealthy communities have dramatically more resources than schools in poor ones. A child growing up in an affluent suburb attends a school with updated facilities, well-compensated teachers, robust extracurriculars, counselors, nurses, and current technology. A child growing up in a rural Idaho county or an urban neighborhood with a low property tax base attends a school that may not be able to afford substitutes when teachers are sick, may have textbooks a decade out of date, and may lack the counseling and mental health resources that children increasingly need.

This is not a failure of the children. It is not a failure of the teachers. It is a failure of funding policy.

Full federal funding for public education means:

Ending the property tax funding model as the primary driver of school resources. No child’s education should depend on the wealth of the neighborhood they were born into.

Competitive teacher compensation. The United States asks people with advanced degrees to take on one of the most demanding, high-stakes jobs in society and pays them less than most other developed nations. Teacher shortages are not mysterious. They are the predictable result of compensation that does not reflect the value of the work.

Physical infrastructure. Thousands of American school buildings are in disrepair — with aging HVAC systems, mold, lead pipes, inadequate broadband, and facilities that communicate to children and teachers that their work does not matter. The federal government has funded the repair of bridges and highways. It can fund the repair of schools.

Full inclusion resources. Children with disabilities, children learning English, children experiencing homelessness or housing instability — these children have legally guaranteed rights to an appropriate education. Those rights are routinely unmet because schools lack the resources to meet them. Full funding means full inclusion.

Mental health and counseling. The ratio of students to school counselors in most American schools is far above what professional organizations recommend. Children are not failing to seek help. They are failing to find it. Every school should have adequate counseling, social work, and mental health support.

The Roots of Independence initiative — a school garden and greenhouse in every school — is a piece of this vision. Schools that are fully funded can afford to maintain gardens, hire educators who can integrate them into curriculum, and build the kind of whole-child educational environment that actually works.

SECTION III: WHAT GENUINELY SUPPORTING HOMESCHOOL FAMILIES LOOKS LIKE

Approximately 3.3 million American children are homeschooled — a number that increased substantially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Homeschool families are not a monolith. They include deeply religious families educating according to their values, families of children with disabilities whose needs were not being met in traditional settings, families in rural areas with poor local school options, families who simply found that their children learned better at home, and families across the full spectrum of income, race, and political belief.

What most of these families share is that they are doing serious, demanding educational work with very little public support — and in some cases, active legal hostility.

Genuine support for homeschool families means:

Curriculum access. Homeschool families should have access to publicly funded educational resources — digital curriculum, library systems, cooperative extension educational programming, and the expertise of public school specialists — without having to fight for it or pay for it out of pocket on top of their taxes.

Co-op and community learning support. Many homeschool families participate in co-ops where children come together for group learning, lab work, physical education, arts, and social connection. These co-ops are doing real educational work and receive essentially no public support. Funding pathways for homeschool co-ops — particularly for science equipment, arts materials, and specialist instruction — would substantially improve educational outcomes for homeschooled children.

Specialist access. Children with learning differences, disabilities, or specialized needs benefit from access to educational specialists — speech therapists, occupational therapists, reading specialists, gifted education coordinators. Homeschool families currently have inconsistent and often nonexistent access to these professionals, depending entirely on their state and willingness of local districts to serve them. Federal policy should establish clear, consistent access rights.

Testing and credentialing clarity. Homeschool students should have clear, consistent pathways to demonstrate their educational attainment — for college admission, for workforce credentialing, for military service. The current patchwork of state laws creates unnecessary uncertainty and disadvantage for homeschool graduates.

Legal clarity and protection from overreach. Homeschool families should not have to fear that seeking help — for a child’s learning difficulty, for a family crisis, for a specialized need — will result in harassment, investigation, or loss of their educational rights. The line between educational support and regulatory overreach is real, and federal policy should protect families while ensuring no child falls through the cracks entirely.

SECTION IV: NOT ALL PARENTS CAN SUFFICIENTLY HOMESCHOOL — AND THAT IS NOT A MORAL FAILING

This must be said plainly, because it is often left out of the homeschool policy debate out of politeness: not every parent can effectively homeschool their children, and pretending otherwise does not serve children or families.

Homeschooling a child well requires time. It requires a parent who can be present, consistently, during the hours when children learn. For a single parent working full time — or two parents both working to afford housing in an economy that has made single-income family life nearly impossible — homeschooling is simply not available as an option, regardless of how much they might want it.

Homeschooling a child well requires educational capacity. Most parents can teach their children to read and do basic arithmetic. Not all parents can confidently teach high school chemistry, calculus, literature analysis, a second language, or the breadth of subjects a comprehensive education requires. This is not a condemnation of those parents. It is a description of the specialization that secondary and post-secondary education requires, and a recognition that the depth of subject matter expertise expected of homeschool parents has increased as educational standards have risen.

Homeschooling a child well requires resources. Curriculum, materials, co-op fees, field trips, specialist fees — homeschooling is not free, and for lower-income families, the costs are prohibitive without public support.

Homeschooling a child well may not be appropriate for every child. Some children thrive in the structure and social environment of a traditional school. Some children need the peer interaction, the physical environment, the specialist staff, or the specific programs that only a well-resourced school can provide.

None of this is an argument against homeschooling. It is an argument against policy that assumes homeschooling is available to all families as an alternative to public education — and therefore uses it as a justification for defunding the schools that millions of children have no alternative to attending.

Public schools are not a fallback for families who failed to homeschool. They are the educational infrastructure of a democracy. They serve every child, including the children whose families cannot or do not choose any other path. Defunding them on the basis that some families prefer alternatives is a policy that punishes children for the circumstances of their birth.

SECTION V: THE BUDGET QUESTION — WHERE THE MONEY ACTUALLY IS

In fiscal year 2023, the United States federal government spent:

— Approximately $900 billion on national defense and military operations

— $95 billion in a single supplemental bill for foreign military assistance

— $886 billion on Medicare and Medicaid

— $58 billion on the Department of Education — the entire federal K-12 investment

The argument that America cannot afford to fully fund its public schools while also supporting homeschool families is not an economic argument. It is a political argument dressed in the language of fiscal constraint.

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of human civilization. Its GDP exceeds $27 trillion. The idea that this country cannot afford to pay teachers a competitive salary, maintain school buildings, provide every child access to counselors and specialists, and give homeschool families meaningful curriculum and co-op support is not serious.

What is true is that education funding competes with other budget priorities — and for decades, it has lost that competition. Defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and financial institutions receive subsidies, tax treatment, and direct payments that dwarf the federal investment in educating children. The carried interest loophole alone — a tax treatment that allows hedge fund managers to pay lower rates on their income than the teachers who educate their children — costs the federal treasury billions annually.

This is a choice. It is not an inevitability. It can be made differently.

Natalie Fleming’s position is simple: if we have enough money to bomb countries on the other side of the world, we have enough money to fully fund the education of every American child — in every setting that works for that child — without asking families to fight each other for scraps.

SECTION VI: A PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK

Federal Education Funding Reform:

Move from property-tax-based to federally-equalized per-pupil funding, ensuring that children in poor rural Idaho counties receive the same baseline investment as children in wealthy suburban districts.

Establish a minimum federal per-pupil expenditure floor, adjusted for regional cost of living, that fully funds teacher salaries at competitive rates, building maintenance, instructional materials, and student support services.

Create a Homeschool Family Support Fund — a federal program providing homeschool families with per-child educational stipends usable for curriculum, co-op fees, specialist services, and approved educational materials. Structured similarly to flexible spending accounts, with broad allowable uses and minimal administrative burden.

Guarantee homeschool students equal access to public school specialist services — speech therapy, occupational therapy, gifted programming, Special Education evaluations — regardless of whether they are enrolled in the public school.

Fund homeschool co-ops as community educational infrastructure, eligible for the same facility grants and equipment funding available to traditional schools.

Invest in teacher preparation, compensation, and retention at levels commensurate with the importance of the work. A country that pays its teachers poverty wages and then expresses surprise at teacher shortages is not serious about education.

CONCLUSION

The education debate in America has been trapped in a false choice for decades: public schools versus private choice, teachers’ unions versus parent rights, government schools versus family autonomy. These framings have served political actors who benefit from the conflict. They have not served children.

Children do not benefit from underfunded public schools. They do not benefit from homeschool families left without support. They do not benefit from the spectacle of parents fighting each other over a budget that has been kept artificially small by people who would rather spend the money elsewhere.

Education is not one size fits all. A child who thrives in a well-resourced public school and a child who thrives being educated at home by a dedicated parent are both American children whose potential deserves investment. The public school teacher and the homeschool parent are both doing serious educational work that the country depends on.

We have enough to honor both.

The question is not whether America can afford to educate its children. The question is whether we will decide that they are worth it.

Natalie Fleming believes they are.