Excerpted from Johann Neem at United Faculty of Washington
According to … Governor (Gregoire)’s logic, …parents who no longer have kids in school, adults without children, and parents 
who can send their children to private schools do not have to share the burden. But if the benefits are shared, so should the costs.
Long ago Samuel Adams worried about just this problem. As governor of Massachusetts following American independence, Adams argued that if private schools proliferated, citizens would no longer be willing to uphold their civic duty by supporting public education and, he feared, “the useful learning, instruction and social feelings in the early parts of life, may cease to be so equally and universally disseminated, as it has heretofore been.” In fact, he believed that the few would be educated while the many were denied access, posing a grave threat to the new republic.