Great Article From Townhall.com:
Charter schools & choice: What is all the fuss about?
by Debra England
May 1, 2005
May 1-7, 2005 is National Charter Schools week.
At a recent conference on education held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a panel of MBA alumni working in the field of education were asked by their moderator what each one thought was the single most important innovation or reform necessary to improve the K-12 public education system. Answers varied widely from "better governance" to "more highly qualified teachers" to "improved reimbursements for charter schools". The panel included the principal of a charter school, the founder of a web-based teacher professional development site, a boutique Wall Streeter who invests in for-profit educational companies, and a senior-level administrator brought in by the State of California to turn around a failed school district. Each offered a sensible and eminently reasonable tactical suggestion based on his or her personal professional experience in the field.
What the panel respondents did not provide, however, was a strategic overview of the field. It would have been illuminating had they stepped back from the tactical level to respond to that question. The overarching strategic driver of substantive educational gains visible in the public school system today is the mechanism of free market-based competitive pressure exerted through parental choice options. The introduction of competition is the single most important innovation necessary to improve the K-12 public education system.
In The Road to Serfdom, a brilliant treatise on the dangers of collectivist ideologies, Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek demonstrated the contradictions inherent between command economies and personal liberty. Hayek deftly illustrated how attempts to control entire economies - or even significant portions of an economy - result inevitably in the growth of totalitarianism and a commensurate loss of personal freedom. Where better to apply Hayek's analysis today than to the $400 billion anachronistic government monopoly that is our public K-12 educational system?
Despite wave upon wave of touted educational "reforms" over the past several decades, this failed government monopoly has succeeded in producing a sclerotic bureaucracy that has flatlined American K-12 academic achievement for the past 35 years. Interestingly, this same timeframe has seen the birth and rapid growth of modern teachers' unions and a nationwide explosion in average annual per pupil spending, which has more than doubled since 1970 - from $4,700 to roughly $10,100 today in constant dollars. Basic economics tells us that when expenditures increase by more than 100% while outputs remain unchanged, we are witnessing a huge productivity decline in the public education sector. Money is clearly not the problem.
Enter the Charter School.
Charter schools are free public schools whose existence is largely dependant upon their ability to achieve good enough student academic growth - as measured by their transparent performance on all required state testing - to attract parents and students and to justify renewed chartering by their authorizing agents. In exchange for operating in this high-accountability environment with lower government reimbursements, charter schools are freed from much of the onerous bureaucratic and union regulations burdening regular public schools. This permits them to allocate resources more flexibly and efficiently to achieve greater academic gains for their students. Most charter schools target the lowest-end socio-economic demographics where the most at-risk children are likely to be trapped in wretched urban public schools which augur poorly for their futures. Not surprisingly, parental demand outstrips supply and most charter schools must utilize a lottery system to allocate available student positions.
Given the sturm und drang which has accompanied the arrival of charter schools on the public education scene, one might be surprised to discover that charter schools enr
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Great Article From Townhall.com: Charter schools & choice: What is all the fuss about? by Debra England May 1, 2005 May 1-7, 2005 is National Charter Schools week. At a recent conference on education held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a panel of MBA alumni working in the field of education were asked by their moderator what each one thought was the single most important innovation or reform necessary to improve the K-12 public education system. Answers varied widely from "better governance" to "more highly qualified teachers" to "improved reimbursements for charter schools". The panel included the principal of a charter school, the founder of a web-based teacher professional development site, a boutique Wall Streeter who invests in for-profit educational companies, and a senior-level administrator brought in by the State of California to turn around a failed school district. Each offered a sensible and eminently reasonable tactical suggestion based on his or her personal professional experience in the field. What the panel respondents did not provide, however, was a strategic overview of the field. It would have been illuminating had they stepped back from the tactical level to respond to that question. The overarching strategic driver of substantive educational gains visible in the public school system today is the mechanism of free market-based competitive pressure exerted through parental choice options. The introduction of competition is the single most important innovation necessary to improve the K-12 public education system. In The Road to Serfdom, a brilliant treatise on the dangers of collectivist ideologies, Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek demonstrated the contradictions inherent between command economies and personal liberty. Hayek deftly illustrated how attempts to control entire economies - or even significant portions of an economy - result inevitably in the growth of totalitarianism and a commensurate loss of personal freedom. Where better to apply Hayek's analysis today than to the $400 billion anachronistic government monopoly that is our public K-12 educational system? Despite wave upon wave of touted educational "reforms" over the past several decades, this failed government monopoly has succeeded in producing a sclerotic bureaucracy that has flatlined American K-12 academic achievement for the past 35 years. Interestingly, this same timeframe has seen the birth and rapid growth of modern teachers' unions and a nationwide explosion in average annual per pupil spending, which has more than doubled since 1970 - from $4,700 to roughly $10,100 today in constant dollars. Basic economics tells us that when expenditures increase by more than 100% while outputs remain unchanged, we are witnessing a huge productivity decline in the public education sector. Money is clearly not the problem. Enter the Charter School. Charter schools are free public schools whose existence is largely dependant upon their ability to achieve good enough student academic growth - as measured by their transparent performance on all required state testing - to attract parents and students and to justify renewed chartering by their authorizing agents. In exchange for operating in this high-accountability environment with lower government reimbursements, charter schools are freed from much of the onerous bureaucratic and union regulations burdening regular public schools. This permits them to allocate resources more flexibly and efficiently to achieve greater academic gains for their students. Most charter schools target the lowest-end socio-economic demographics where the most at-risk children are likely to be trapped in wretched urban public schools which augur poorly for their futures. Not surprisingly, parental demand outstrips supply and most charter schools must utilize a lottery system to allocate available student positions. Given the sturm und drang which has accompanied the arrival of charter schools on the public education scene, one might be surprised to discover that charter schools enr