While the US prepares itself for a new President a lot of questions are being asked about what education in the country should look like and how much choice parents should have over where their children can study. This article from the Wall Street Journal notes that “studies have found that school choice reduces arrests and that private-school students experience less bullying”. This has been put down to enforcing discipline: anyone ever exposed to the military and their way of life would concur. Like in many other developed economies, mental illness is a huge problem for young people: “between 2007 and 2015, suicide rates doubled for females age 15 to 19 and increased by 30% for males”. To put this in perspective, more than four times the number of deaths from Covid in children aged 5 -17 are due to suicide. So, while mental health is a big challenge to address, allowing parents a choice of state or private (funding-permitting) or Charter schools (operating outside of the rules of state school system) can account for a decrease of up to 10% in suicide rates among 15- to 19-year-olds. Anything which can bring down the numbers of this sort of tragedy must be taken seriously by everyone.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/school-choice-better-than-prozac-11608248279