PRESS RELEASE

McNerney for Congress
California’s 11th Congressional District

For Immediate Release
October 18, 2010

DAVID HARMER’S PLAN TO ABOLISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS: IN HIS OWN WORDS

Dublin, CA – Voters in California’s 11th Congressional District deserve to know the full truth about embattled Congressional candidate David Harmer’s radical plan to abolish public schools. As Harmer scrambles to come up with a plausible defense for his extreme plan to end the public school system – outlined in a San Francisco Chronicle column he penned called “Abolish the Public Schools” and a similar column he co-authored for the Cato Institute – his campaign has resorted to false and misleading statements about his views.

Harmer’s extreme views on education have made national headlines over the last week, generating coverage by news outlets such as Mother Jones, AOL News, and Vanity Fair as well as national television coverage on MSNBC. Despite the Harmer campaign’s deception, the truth about David Harmer’s extreme plan to eliminate public schools is clear. Selected quotes from Harmer’s two articles advocating the complete end of public schools follow:

Quotes from “Abolish the Public Schools” by David Harmer:

“In the freest and most prosperous country on Earth, in the midst of the information age, government ownership and operation of the schools is a counterproductive anachronism.”

“To attain quantum leaps in educational quality and opportunity, however, we need to separate school and state entirely. Government should exit the business of running and funding schools.”

“This is no utopian ideal; it's the way things worked through the first century of American nationhood… Schooling then was typically funded by parents or other family members responsible for the student, who paid modest tuition. If they couldn't afford it, trade guilds, benevolent associations, fraternal organizations, churches and charities helped”

Quotes from Cato Policy Analysis No. 269

“The authors are 100 percent committed to getting government out of the business of educating our children.”

“We see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling. In fact, after careful study, we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.”

“Because we know how the government schools perpetuate themselves, we can design a plan to dismantle them.”

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