School choice prepares kids for the world
Jay Evensen, editor of the
- Randy
School choice prepares kids for the world
By Jay Evensen
Private school vouchers are shaping up to be a hot topic at this year's Legislature. Unfortunately, it's the kind of heat that gets passions burning, and when that happens, people stop listening.
So it might help for everyone to calm down a bit and look at the problem from a different perspective.
OK, I know. Even using the word "problem" is a problem. Supporters of the status quo don't think there is much of a problem, or at least that it can be solved within the current framework.
That's why a recent report from the
The report, by the way, was supported by foundations that typically don't strike fear in either side of this debate — people such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The problem, as the report sees it, centers less on competition between public and private schools in
"Over the past 30 years, one country after another has surpassed us in the proportion of their entering work force with the equivalent of a high school diploma," the report's executive summary says. "Thirty years ago, the
And the surprising aspect to this is that other nations are producing highly educated people willing to work for much less than our own highly educated people. Even if we succeed in producing more engineers and mathematicians, employers would rather hire theirs for less.
The answer, the report says, is to be the country that produces important new products and technologies and, therefore, can "capture a premium in world markets. ..."
Success "depends on a deep vein of creativity that is constantly renewing itself, and on a myriad of people who can imagine how people can use things that have never been available before, create ingenious marketing and sales campaigns, write books, build furniture, make movies and imagine new kinds of software that will capture people's imagination and become indispensable to millions."
And, quite frankly, our current system of public education, with its agrarian-based, Industrial Age assumptions, isn't cutting it.
I learned about this report from John Fund, an editorial writer at the Wall Street Journal. I sat next to him recently before he spoke to a group of school-choice supporters in
Fund referred to the current system as the "education-industrial complex" and compared reform efforts here to "breaking the iron rice bowl." But, he said, "If you don't break it, the Chinese and Indians will break it for you."
Before you get too emotional, consider that the Center on Education and the Economy has a much more radical proposal than school vouchers. It recommends forming state boards of examination that could pass kids onto college when they're ready, regardless of age. It would pay teachers much more than they currently make, and it would make them all state employees, not employees of local districts.
And, yes, it would provide more money for the most effective teachers, as well as for those willing to take on the tough inner-city challenges or the tough subjects.
Perhaps the most radical recommendation is that all schools would be operated by independent contractors, some even owned and run by teachers. These would operate under contracts and monitored for performance, and parents would be allowed to freely choose among them.
You can read the report at www.skillscommission.org.
It sort of makes the debate at this year's Legislature seem like a food fight over baby steps. But if
Jay Evensen is editor of the
© 2007 Deseret News Publishing Company
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