Checker recently visited schools in the slums of Hyderabad, India, where low-budget private schools are educating kids--and doing a pretty good job. Here are some of his thoughts, from a commentary just published on Forbes.com:
In America my efforts to widen education options and promote school choice for poor kids, like the efforts of most U.S. reformers, have always assumed that, at day's end, the government must pay for this. Perhaps that's true in the Western world, perhaps it's not. But elsewhere on the planet, I can now attest, poor families are paying for it themselves and education entrepreneurs are responding to their demand (and their governments' failure) by starting, managing and growing such schools.Most of them occupy sketchy facilities, sans playgrounds, labs, libraries and fancy technology. Many teachers are themselves just high-school graduates. The kids bring their own lunches. Parents provide transportation and go to the bazaar for textbooks and uniforms. Sports and extracurricular activities are scarce to nonexistent. Neither schools nor families have any money to spare.
But teaching and learning are occurring in those cramped and sometimes ill-lit classrooms. Eager youngsters, prodded by determined parents, are drinking in whatever knowledge and skills their books and teachers can provide. And while besting nearby government schools on state tests is no high accolade in places like Andhra Pradesh, most of these private schools are doing that at astonishingly low costs.