[ChrisV]

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I think it's a little simplistic (to put it very mildly) to assume that if you get rid of public education, it will be replaced by private education at the same quality level as current private education.

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That's not what I assume at all. I assume that it will be replaced by a vastly superior product, as is true of every other case where the market is allowed to provide the product instead of a soviet-style centrally-planned bureaucratic monopoly.

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a) What Phil said.

b) The market does not produce superior products, it produces products which are more desirable to the person providing the money. McDonald's is not superior to similarly priced food by any criterion other than that people like to eat it. In the case of people paying for their child's education themseles, religious parents are unlikely to want their children to receive a broad-based science education. Also, in a fully private education market, I would expect some significant percentage of the dollars to be provided by eventual employers, similar to apprenticeships. In this case "more desirable" would be defined by the employer, and their definition is unlikely to include things not useful on the job. Certainly not things like whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or vice versa which is, when you think about it, a fairly practically useless thing for most people to know.