There's a fascinating story on the front page of today's Washington Post about parents living in the District of Columbia who are paying to send their child to a public school in Maryland.

Maryland has excess capacity in some schools, so it is accepting students from elsewhere who are willing to pay the tuition.  The parents weren't happy with the local school their child was supposed to attend to in DC, so they took their business elsewhere.

This wasn't a specialty school of some kind that offered an enriched curriculum in performing arts, science, or math.  It was a regular academic high school that for some reason --safety, instruction, location, etc. -- the parents thought was preferable to the one they were already paying for with their DC taxes.

What makes the story even more fascinating is that tuition at the Maryland public school is less than what private schools in the are are charging.

In other words, the Maryland school is offering a better product at a lower price than is available to the parents elsewhere and is reducing the burden on Maryland taxpayers in the process. The parent, meanwhile, are getting a better education for their child and are paying a lower price than they thought possible.

This has to be setting off alarms at public school systems that, like the one in DC, has consistently been considered inferior.  Up to now, unless a parent was willing and able to homeschool their child, the only alternative was a high-priced and hard-to-get-admitted-to private school that most couldn't afford.  Now the market has created a lower-priced alternative.

Andrew/Pete...What am I missing?  Why shouldn't there be a market for public education?