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Monday, July 23, 2007
Putting the Public Back in Public Education
Dianne Ravitch, an NYU education professor, has an interesting article summing up the state of public education policy. She makes the argument that market-oriented reforms of the school system, like charter schools and vouchers, are no magic bullet.
The promise of charters was that the bad ones would be weeded out by public officials and the marketplace—since parents presumably would avoid sending their children to the poor performers. Unfortunately, there has not been enough weeding. Low-performing charter schools survive, and the students who attend them are getting cheated. For whatever reason, parents in the failing charter schools do not necessarily move out, either because they like the community or a teacher or something else (the same happens in low-performing regular public schools). The persistence of low-performing charter schools is a market failure.
For charter schools to be part of the solution, public officials must be far more vigilant in approving charter applications and much faster to shut down charter operators that cannot meet their performance goals. Meanwhile, regular public schools have shown little interest in replicating any of the successful models that have been piloted in charter schools. For example, while most people admire the KIPP schools, there are few if any public schools that are adopting the KIPP model; similarly, the Achievement First schools in Connecticut have been extraordinarily successful, but few public schools emulate them.
The experience with charters, at least as most of them are now structured, suggests that the U.S. public school system is not really comparable to a marketplace. It would be a disaster for public education if all the motivated children in a district went to charter schools and the unmotivated, underachieving students went to district schools.
In the end, Ravitch suggests that schools do the obvious and establish a national core curriculum- you know, mandate that all kids learn stuff and then test them to make sure they do. What hasn't done that? Market forces. What can do that? A government mandate.
Competition and the market has not saved us, not in education, public service provision or in health care. Once this country gets past its hang ups about government, and its starry-eyed view of the market, then maybe we can start making policy that works.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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