Illegal Students

Michael Flaherty at the WSJ has an article titled, The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School:

From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their gates.

Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting out-of-district students.
Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.

In August, an internal PowerPoint presentation from the American Federation of Teachers surfaced online. The document described how the AFT undermined minority parent groups' efforts in Connecticut to pass the "parent trigger" legislation that offers parents real governing authority to transform failing schools. A key to the AFT's success in killing the effort, said the document, was keeping parent groups from "the table." AFT President Randi Weingarten quickly distanced her organization from the document, but it was small consolation to the parents once again left in the cold.

At the same time, many American schools are forced to accept the children of illegal aliens, and to even suggest that they shouldn't results in strident accusations of racism and heartlessness.

I am all for public schools educating the children of illegal immigrants. The children are not at fault, and not only would it be morally wrong to deny them an education, it would also be reckless from a utilitarian perspective. However, since those expenses have been incurred due to the deceptions and irresponsibility of the federal government, I also strongly believe that every school which educates these children should be paid to do so by the federal government. (I also believe this is the correct way to handle the local and state incarceration expenses for illegal aliens.)

For similar reasons, the AFT and other organizations that act to destroy educational choice and quality in the American public schools should be forced to pay for the consequences. That, however, would be impossible; you cannot reimburse someone for giving them an inferior education during their childhood. Consequently, these organizations should be abolished.