For those??who doubt that competition has positive effects on public-school systems, this article , from the Houston Chronicle , is instructive. The Houston district's enrollment is dropping; meanwhile,??charter schools there, such as KIPP, can't keep up with demand (this is occurring in other cities , too). HISD school board member Diana Davilla told the Chronicle about KIPP, "They're attracting more students than we are. Somewhere, we're missing something because they're building schools and we're closing them." The district hopes to change that:
Leaders said they're also working on ways to use data, including performance pay information, to create a profile of ideal teaching candidates. They plan, for instance, to use the data to determine which universities are producing HISD's best teachers.
Good ideas. None of which would have germinated without healthy competition.