Why Are Government Schools Advertising For Students?

 I'm not sure if this happens in every state in the union but here in Michigan public schools spend our money to advertise for students. They do it because by gaining as many students as possible they are lobbying parents to send their kids to those schools so the school can get as much money as they can from the state and federal government. Is this how we should be spending our hard earned money?  Does this serve the kids or the unions? And when the government makes cuts they start with the teachers,police or fire when there is more then enough stupid things they could cut. It's high time money deemed for education only get used for educating our kids. I'd like to know your thoughts on our educational system and what we need to do to fix it. In Michigan we have given the teachers unions everything they wanted so that they keep educating our kids. They will strike if they don't get what they want. They ask for more money and promise that it will increase our test scores and our children's education. More money has actually made things worse. We keep increasing teachers pay and retirements and we keep getting worse and worse scores. Just like the war on drugs we need to look at the effectiveness of our educational system and the best ways to make changes that will work. I'd like to see a privatization in the educational system. I send my kids to a Lutheran school. The cost is about half as much as it cost us to teach in government schools. This year they got 100% on the MEAP tests. Lets just say that not one government school came close to those scores no matter how awesome the school.