Privatize Education

Privatize education. That’s the solution. The problem isn’t so easy to explain. Approximately 90% of school age children in the states of Indiana and Kentucky attend public school. But public schools are not all alike. Typically, the quality of the school—as well as of the student—correlates closely with family income.

The Center for Market and Public Organisation, a think tank from the United Kingdom, studied the degree to which schools were socio-economically sorted in districts with three types of school systems: Neighborhood school systems, where students were assigned to schools on the basis of where they lived; Privatized school systems, where students were given publicly funded vouchers progressively based on income; and school choice systems, where the district offered a fixed array of schools for parents to choose from. The study found that the greatest degree of socio-economic sorting occurred with the school choice model and that the least degree of socio-economic sorting occurred with the voucher school model. The difference between these two models was that the voucher system allowed schools to respond to market signals.

As many as 30% of our high school students fail to graduate. That’s a powerful commentary on the quality of our schools. In effect, they’re not just saying they want their schools to be better; missing school entirely is a better use of their time. Education is a personalized affair; the best learning environment will be different for different children. The private market model achieves the best results because it provides for the best matching between students and educational services. If you’re a parent, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.

The irony is that our teachers are teaching better now than at any point in our history. There are tests, like the Brigance, that can screen kids as early as Kindergarten to determine who is likely to struggle with reading and what kinds of interventions will be necessary. The Woodcock-Munoz test can determine the degree of English proficiency a student has upon entering school. In decades past we may have labeled kids simply as slow or ornery; teachers now have the background and wherewithal to diagnose specific learning disabilities. At all levels, teachers know more about the human mind and the different factors that affect learning.

The problem for many public school teachers is that they are limited in the ways they can help children learn. We task them to teach solely to a narrow set of academic standards such that they are unable to teach other types of information that could greatly increase the learning and achievement of some students. In Indiana a teacher can start a Charter school for kids who might learn better in a different environment, but the school will then have little purview to select the students that the environment is designed for. Since Charter schools can’t charge tuition and state funding is limited, it is difficult for them to offer special services and still be profitable. Our current system limits the effectiveness of our teachers, as well as their wages and professional opportunities. If you’re a teacher, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.

The problem with the current public education system is not that it fails to force poor and minority children to reach an arbitrary academic standard; the standards of excellence are too narrowly defined. The schools of poor children are bad because they fail to develop the strengths of their students. In many cases children do poorly on tests because of untreated learning disabilities. But many children do poorly simply because the tests hold no interest for them. Privatizing education will open the door to many new ways for students to earn intellectual credibility and meet their learning needs. If you’re a student, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.