Things They Should Invent: extreme long-term education planning

I think when they need to make massive changes to the basic structure of public education, they should do so in the extreme long term, so that the children it will affect haven't been born yet. Then parents or potential parents can plan their families to avoid having their children affected by the changes, if they so choose.

I first thought of this for the double cohort. Instead of eliminating OAC for students who were already in the school system, they should have made it at 20-year plan. Then in 1995*, for example, they could have told parents, "The double cohort will affect students born in 1997* and 1998*" and parents could have made an informed decision on whether or not to have children who will be affected by the double cohort. Of course, some students would still be affected for various reasons, but perhaps enough family planning would take place that the impact of the double cohort would be reduced.

*All these years are made up - I don't remember the precise timing

Now it just occurred to me that they could do the same thing about eliminating public funding for Catholic schools. (Yes, I do think this is inevitable - I thought so even back when I was Catholic.) They could announce now in 2007 that publicly-funded Catholic education will be available to all children born up to, say, December 31, 2017, and then it will be eliminated. That would give people the opportunity to plan and/or complete their families (yes, the combination of family planning plus Catholic education is far more common than you might expect) to ensure that all their kids get a Catholic education, and wouldn't pull the rug out from under any existing students. And people who still want a Catholic education for their children but won't be able to have said children before the end of 2017 will have plenty of time to come up with a contingency plan.