Eduwonk Andy Rotherham is a business-minded fellow, and yesterday he made the point that as districts downsize, schools close, and some teachers (maybe) lose their jobs, public education will bear the same trials that globalization has brought to many businesses. He writes, "like trade it's impossible to roll back these forces over time, and even if we could, the benefits of a more customized and performance oriented school system outweigh the costs."
The benefits of a customized and performance oriented school system definitely outweigh the costs. But it is most certainly not impossible in k-12 education "to roll back these forces over time." K-12 education is still largely a government-run and government-provided enterprise. Unlike most private companies, which either compete effectively against their competitors or shutter their stores, America's schools can continue indefinitely and blissfully their assembly line production of poorly educated pupils. Also, think about the farm bill, which has lately been in the news. If bureaucrats will go to such lengths to protect from competition certain inefficient private industries, imagine the lengths they could conceivably go to protect a government industry--k-12 ed--that doesn't feel nearly the competitive pressure that do, say, sugar and corn production.
As both Checker and Andy said last night at Fordham, education reformers have done much, much good over the past 25 years. Widespread talk about accountability and standards and school performance was not occurring in the 1980s. But continued progress, while probable, is not inevitable. The Regs and Randis of the world are still here. Eduwonk writes that our current education debate "pretty clearly puts on the table the question of whether school systems are educational programs or job programs." Reg and Randi are with the latter, and they're willing and able to fight for it.
Photo by Flickr user lhoon.