Then in January 2006, John Stossel’s eye-opening documentary, Stupid in America, was aired. The investigative ABC show was billed as “a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America’s public schools, and it’s about time we face up to it…The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic, and South Korea…This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.”
Yes, competition in education, like anything else, will improve the product. Doing what we are doing and continuing to do what we are doing is the classic definition of insanity. Let a thousand flowers bloom and try different ways. Let the teacher’s unions wither and the administrators to fly away.