A Confusing Mess of Contradictions

[Updates below]

[This is a repost. Original article lost after the recent server move.]

Do We Need Free Market Principles in Education?

Monopolies or Competition?
Supply and Demand or Price Controls?
Market Demand or Government Demand?
Pay Well for Quality or Pay MORE for Poor Quality?

I am really pondering now, but I don't have an MBA.

Recently the Governor of Texas set forth a proposal for incentives to promote excellence in education. Rewarding good behavior is a foundation for parenting, business, and society. Rewarding bad behavior only produces more bad behavior, right?

Seems like a simple concept.

Janelle Shepard, the author of this article, is the director of Texans For Texas. I suppose that's better than Chileans For Texas or Iowans For Texas. Don't want other people messin' in our affairs.

Ms. Shepard asks a series of important questions at the beginning of her article. Given the way they are asked and the nature of the organization she runs, it would seem the answers she would use would be:

• Do We Need Free Market Principles in Education? Yes
  
• Monopolies or Competition? Competition
  
• Supply and Demand or Price Controls? Supply and Demand
  
• Market Demand or Government Demand? Market Demand
  
• Pay Well for Quality or Pay MORE for Poor Quality? Pay Well for Quality

What's her solution to the Texas educational trainwreck? Does she advocate abolishing the government grip, near-monopolistic as it is, on grade school education? Does she suggest we should eliminate the price controls of government regulation and taxation? Does she believe the market in education should be left alone by government interference and demands? Does she say we should take responsibility and pay for the services we desire rather than forcing others to share the burden, whether those services are cheap, expensive, high quality, or poor quality?

In other words, does she truly propose we apply free market principles to public education?

No.

The state should:

1. Establish statewide training requirements only when it is clear that one mode of training is most effective in all cases.
   
2. Allow experimentation not only with new ways of training and certifying teachers and principals but also with new ways of assigning, compensating, and evaluating them.
   
3. Make teaching and school leadership attractive to people who want to be judged and paid on the basis of performance.
   
4. Eliminate job protection for experienced teachers whose efforts fall off. Performance should be expected throughout one's classroom career, not just at the beginning.
   
5. De-couple pay from seniority.
   
6. Signal the importance of performance by paying for it.
   
7. Allow schools to experiment with new combinations of teaching and technology.
   
8. Recruit principals who are effective executives, seeking them in many fields, not only education.

She chooses to re-engage the state in increasing administrative minutiae, trying to encourage better behavior with "incentives" that she erroneously considers to be free market-like.

It's the equivalent of complaining about the dangers of a loaded handgun being pointed at your head, and then being relieved when the person pointing the gun at your head is replaced with someone else. Her proposed ideas don't address the fundamental problem of having the government (be it federal, state, or local) run and fund schools: other people messin' with our affairs.

UPDATE(5/4/2004 9:07am)
I did some quick 'n dirty educational cost calculations of my own.

Posted by Drizzten at March 29, 2004 01:12 PM