If wealthy parents want to pay for an education that’s fine but when more taxpayer money goes to private schools than public it feels a bit off.

This is a really frequently misunderstood topic and there are plenty of people who intentionally cherry-pick the numbers to make the government look bad over it. So, I genuinely understand where you are coming from.

The first bit of confusion is that public schools get most of their funding from their state government. A comparatively small percentage comes from the federal government, usually for major works. Private school government funding comes from the federal government.

The second bit that confuses people is that funding isn't just that 'every school gets $x'. The. Amount of funding is mostly dictated by the student cohort. Rather than thinking of it as every school gets $x, think of it as the default amount per student is $x.

So yes, you get situations where a big private school with 2,500 students seems to get more money than any public school. But average it per student and account for what the state government is providing to the public school and the numbers come out far more evenly.

I sure agree that this should be far more apparent and easy to follow. Maybe the federal government should give the funds to the state education departments and have the states fund the private schools? I'd be on board with that.

I get why private exists and wouldn’t want it to go away overnight but why not properly fund public instead.

Ignoring my personal distaste for private schools for a sec, I find irony in the fact that we're discussing this topic on a post about early child care - where it is almost all private. We managed to get into the local government childcare centre, but it was not easy. And not much different in price.