Private vs Public
The droning battle cry of Republicans is that private is better than public. Whether the topic is health care or education, they state as fact that a privately run institution is better than any publicly run one.
How does this make any sense at all? The people who run the institutions are the same. Their ideas will be the same – with the exception that when they work for the government (we the people) they are not beholding to shareholders who want their stock prices to skyrocket.
From your own personal experience, you know that private companies do not do everything right. I've worked for several in the span of about 20 years and each has either gone out of business, been sold and is a shadow of what it was, or is hanging on by a thread after "rightsizing". How many employers and bosses have you had? How many of them did everything right? How many of them were right more often than they were wrong? Even when it comes to turning a profit, they don't get it right.
Some things simply do not work well when they are run for profit. Particularly in the United States at this point in time, businessmen generally get involved in business to earn as much money in as short a time as possible, with little regard for the future. The point of view is that a business is a money making machine, not something that provides a useful product or service. Do we really want that short term point of view to dominate the education of our children? Do we want students educated in this manner to be our doctors, lawyers, and lawmakers in 20 years?
When somebody says schools would be better if they were all run for profit, ask yourself what the difference would be. Is that a solution or just a different way of running things with its own associated problems? Applying privatization as a cure for everything is no better than treating every disease with antibiotics. Antibiotics work well for some diseases and not all for others. Overuse makes them all ineffective. No solution is right for every situation.