My fraternity has a saying, "Merely because a practice is prevalent may be the poorest reason for continuing it." I have spent most of my adult life watching the debate surrounding the "privatization" of public education and the general nature has been mixed, but gernerally fearful. Comments such as those posted over at Education at the Brink are but one example.
I don't know for sure, but I think it was Einstein who once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same think over and over again and expecting a different result. For decades state legislatures, schools systems, Congress and just about every other legislative body or elected official in America has promised, and often delivered, more funding for elementary and secondary education, yet the results don't seem to be getting any better. That same action over and over, year after year, administration after administration has yielded the same result, yet we continue to expect different (read "better") results if we just spend more money. Insanity indeed!
In short, the practice of throwing more money at the education system has become so prevalant that institutional inertia has taken over along with a healthy dose of group think. Just because we wish it to be so, doesn't make the practice worth continuing. Allocating more money represents the easy solution and the easy solution doesn't work.
So if the old prevalent practices no longer work, and clearly a majority of Americans feel that way even if the education establishment claims they are wrong, then let's try something new. The fact that schools run by private companies have not been able to prove equivalent or superior quality is a result not of poor management, but rather poor opportunity. These operations have not been in operation for enough time, on a wide enough scale, to be able to prove effectiveness. If these schools show improvement, the education establishment is quick to dismiss the improvement as a blip or the result of a one time infusion of money or effort. If, heaven forbid, performance shows a decline, however small, the Educrats are quick to jump all over the decline as an abject failure of privatized education.
The truth of the matter is that most politicians and educrats are too fearful of backlash to even take a risk such as privatization on a wider scale. But at this stage a risk is necessary. American education at the collegiate level is, in my humble opinion, head and shoulders above all other university systems in the world. I firmly believe it is because these colleges and universities, both public and private, compete for the finite (although very large) amount of money in the form of student tuitions. Why, then, cannot the same spirit of educational competition permeate the elementary and secondary spheres? The answer--lack of will power and some outdated perceptions of the type of education necessary and that the only way to deliver an education is to do so through the state.
The current educational system is based upon a 1930's and 1940's perception of a proper education system. In the modern world, such practices jeopardize our children's future. We must break out of that mindset of thinking and find new practices.
My first suggestion would be to step out of the insanity and rethink our "fears" about privatization. It has not always worked in other fields, but no one ever succeeded without trying first.
