Public Goods - Education

"We need to run it like a business."

I am not sure from where the attraction to this viewpoint of the best means of managing public goods comes considering how short-sighted and wrong-headed the viewpoint is.  As the parent of a child in the Milwaukee Public School system, I encounter statements like this regarding the best way to manage public education.  One of the reasons persons voice this view so vociferously in Milwaukee is the existence of the school choice program.  Having gotten a foothold in the public education system, those who would privatize it entirely regularly clamor about public education's failings, the need to give students a 'choice' in their education, and the virtues of private enterprise as an education model, particularly the notion of competition. I believe that some proponents of privatizing public education legitimately believe that doing so will improve the quality of education for Milwaukee students.  However, many proponents of privatization care little for the quality of education students actually receive and primarily care about limiting the role of government in society.  For this cohort, any reduction in government administration of public education is virtuous regardless of the outcome for the students.

We know from the experience of the Milwaukee voucher program that introducing 'competition' to the public education market is not the panacea that has been promised.  In fact, the measured results demonstrate that introducing competition into the education market has done nothing to improve the educational outcome of students who have opted out of public education in favor of voucher schools.  The plain fact is that voucher schools perform no better than their public school counterparts on standardized testing.

Even if voucher schools outperformed public schools, that would not necessarily be definitive proof that a private enterprise model is appropriate for elementary and secondary education.  Education is fundamentally different from private enterprise so long as we cling to the tenet that every child is entitled to an education that meets agreed on standards.  The private enterprise model, or the free market, involves a constant churning of enterprises striving to meet the needs of consumers in order to stay afloat.  Most businesses that are started end up failing to sell enough products or services to stay afloat and fail within a relatively short period of time.  Contrary to this constant churning, the public education system commits to educating every student regardless of ability.  We do not allow the education system to churn over failures and let them fend for themselves.  If a child does not meet the accepted standards, the public education system does not cast them out of the system.  Instead, the public education system must continue to educate the child.

The private enterprise system would not be appropriate for elementary and secondary education unless it would be required to educate every student, regardless of ability, just as the public education system.  If this requirement were imposed on a private education system, it would cease to function as a free market.  Competition alone would not guide the success of the system because, like the public education system, the private education system could not simply drop failing students out of the system.  So a student who misses 50% of the school days because of her family situation could not simply be forced out of a private school.  This student's lack of progress would have to be included in the educational outcome measurements of the private school in the same way that the student's lack of progress is included in the educational outcome measurements of the public schools.

One argument is that competition will help individual schools rather than individual students because under-performing or failing schools would be required to improve or they would be closed.  This argument has some virtues in that schools that are not performing up to accepted standards ought to be improved.  The problem is that in our system of educating every student, the students of a failing school that is closed would have to go somewhere else in the system.  If we grant equal access to education for all students, then no private school that is part of the public system and receives public funds should be able to turn away students that are required to find new schools as a result of their school being closed.  The law would have to mandate that private schools receiving public funds accommodate the students of failed schools to the same extent that public schools accommodate them.  If the law does not mandate this, then private schools operating in the public system and receiving public funds are fundamentally different from the public schools against which they compete.  Private schools would have a competitive advantage over public schools that would render the education market other than free.  The education market would not be like private enterprise because it would not be a fair competition between enterprises.

It may be that some hybridized public-private model actually can deliver better educational outcomes for all students than the strictly public model.  The problem is that there is no evidence that this is the case.  Another huge problem is that the private enterprise advocates have not adequately answered the question of whether and how the private school system will deliver an education to every child.  I suspect that the question has not been adequately answered because the private enterprise advocates know it is an impossible task to be held to the same mandates as the public system and achieve better results.  Delivering educational services to  poor children and children with disabilities is an enormously expensive proposition, both monetarily and in terms of time.  Private enterprise advocates have never been able to demonstrate how the private system would be able to overcome these hurdles any better than the public education system.  If we are using public funds to educate students, it seems only fair to me that we ought not allow education to be privatized unless it can be demonstrated that private education can deliver superior results to public education, for every student, regardless of any other arguments against using public funds to support private schools.

I have not even touched on the merits of running anything like a business, though this deserves some comments as well.  I personally would like the private enterprise advocates to state with clarity and precision which business the education system ought to be run like.  Enron?  Lehman Brothers?  Washington Mutual?  Even successful businesses fail.  Kodak was enormously successful for decades, but eventually failed.  General Motors failed.  American Airlines is failing.  This is to say nothing of the countless new businesses started every year in this country that do not make it past their first year.  Before we commit to running education like a business, it would be wise to consider which business we wish to run education like.  Enron?  Lehman Brothers?  Washington Mutual?  Do we want our education system to have the same failure rate as new businesses?  The bottom line is that running education like a business cannot guaranty it will produce better results than the current public system.  In fact, running education like a business cannot even guaranty any success if our current private enterprise system is the model.