new dog old trick

Is there market demand for education?

BusinessPundit: The Problem with Making Education Market Based.

Looks like a trifecta of education-related posts this evening. Rob at BusinessPundit had a post on education last week that I'm just getting to. While I take Rob's point, I'm not sure if I can agree with him completely on this one.

If you read Tom Peter's Outsourcing Manifesto (as I pointed to here), you know that one of his 18 "theses" is that primary and secondary education in this country must be reformed. That's not exactly a novel idea - it seems like I've been reading about the decline of American education for at least 20 years now. See also my post (scroll down) on Craig Barrett's WSJ editorial on the subject. But Rob thinks that both the liberal and conservative solutions to education reform miss a core issue. As he says:

The stereotypical liberal idea is to throw more money at the schools. Yeah it might help to pay teachers more. Then perhaps we would get a better crop of teachers instead of having so many who go into it because it is easy and you get summers off. But, there are plenty of examples of schools with lower spending per pupil ratios doing better than schools with higher ratios. The conservative answer to this is to make education more market based via vouchers or whatever. While this is certainly a better idea, it doesn't address a major problem with education - there isn't enough demand for it.

As I understand it, his core argument differentiates "training" and "education". Here's the money quote (emphasis added):

A market can't fix a problem when the demand is all screwed up to begin with. Demand for education is like demand for fitness - we all want to do it, we all know we should, we all know it will help us, but it is hard and boring and we would rather watch American Idol. How many people really go to college to learn? Not very many. Most go so they can get a degree and thus get a job. It's not about education, it is about job training. How many people read to learn once they are out of school?

Home schooling

Economist.com | Home-schooling

This article on home schooling is from the 26 Feb issue of The Economist. I read it in the print edition but it is available online. A companion article requires a subscription.

I've just posted on Craig Barrett's WSJ editorial on education reform (scroll down). Home schooling is one of the ways that Americans are taking control over their children's education away from the government education monopoly. I had been generally aware of home-schooling, but until reading this article I was not aware of the numbers of people who have converted to home-schooling.

The sub-titles on the article are:

George Bush's secret army

and

A revolution is happening in American education. As it grows in size, it should frighten teachers everywhere

It opens with...

JUST how bad are American schools? And how deeply do conservative Americans distrust their government? One answer to both these questions is provided by the growth of home-schooling. As many as 2m American students—one in 25—may now be being taught at home.

This is a trend that I'm ambivalent about. As the article points out, mass public education has been one of the hallmarks of modern, advanced societies. Throwing our hands up in the air over the poor quality of the public schools and teaching children at home is simply not an option for the vast majority of people. So this is not a fix for our education system. In fact, I wonder if having all of these people opting out of the public schools is actually decreasing pressure to fix the schools. But, I can't argue with the right of people to do home-schooling if they choose - in fact, you have to admire their willingness to make such large personal investments in their children.

Education SOS

WSJ.com - Education SOS.

Craig Barrett of Intel authored this editorial in Thursday's Wall Street Journal (requires a subscription I'm afraid) regarding the need to fix our grades K-12 education system if we expect to remain a leader in the worldwide economy. I just recently pointed to Tom Peter's Outsourcing Manifesto (see my post here) which had as one of its 18 theses the need to dramatically reform our education system so this WSJ editorial is timely.

Since not everyone can easily access the WSJ editorial, I'll copy some it if here and hope that the copyright gods smile in my direction. This is an important issue for anyone who cares about the ability of the American economy to compete effectively against nations like India and China and Singapore et al. as this century matures. As Barrett says in his opening:

Economists have long predicted that education will be the fuel that drives the global economy. Well, many nations have already begun to rev their engines, while America's is stalled.