Mises.org has posted an excellent article on free-market education to their site.  I recommend that you go read it for yourself, but will give a short synopsis here.  A teacher in a San Diego high school decides to sell advertising on tests and quizzes to local area businesses and parents.  This helps the teacher to do his best job in class without incurring more expenses himself.  People allowed to operate within the free-market will figure out a profitable way to do the best thing for all parties involved.  Taxpayer funded schools (or anything else for that matter) are nothing but a drain on the taxpayer and will always do a poor job.  Think of the irony of congress getting a pay raise while they demand pay cuts for the automaker executives.  We need to remember the housing bubble which precipitated the current crisis started with the fed and it’s socialist manipulation of credit.  Congress could control or abolish the fed if they cared.  Shouldn’t they take a pay cut – or be fired?