Education Reform: The Case for the Private Sector in School Reform
Education Reform: By Joel Klein, Aug 16 2012
Education Reform: Innovative companies have improved nearly every area of public life. So why are ideologues trying to keep them away from education?
Apple Marketing chief Phil Schiller introduces a new digital textbook service at a news conference in New York on January 19, 2012. (Reuters)
Given the costly chasm between the educational performance of U.S. students and those in other countriesâand the shameful gap between white students and their black and Latino counterparts here at homeâyou’d think school improvement would be an all-hands-on-deck imperative in which the best minds in the public, private, and philanthropic sectors came together to lift our children’s prospects.
Yet such pragmatic problem,solving is threatened today by critics who condemn any private involvement in schools as a matter of “privatization,” “profiteering,” or worse. These ideological foes of business’ contribution to the public good ignore history in their attempt to protect a failed status quo. If their campaign to quash educational innovation succeeds, the real losers will be our kids.
Here’s the curious thing: Those who criticize recent private-sector interest in education never utter a peep about the billions that publishing houses and construction firms have earned through our schools over the decades.
A moment’s reflection reminds us that business innovation has long been critical to public goals in sectors as diverse as health care, energy, and computing. In health care, pharmaceutical and medical device firms have worked closely with government partners to make America the acknowledged global leader in medical innovation. In energy, privately funded breakthroughs in gas exploration technologies hold the promise of liberating America from dependence on foreign oil. In computing, Google’s privately funded search utility has democratized access to information in ways that improve countless lives.
The list could go onâencompassing communications, transportation, and more. In each instance, public and private actors play the roles to which they’re best suited: Private firms compete to develop innovative products and services that deliver social benefits, while public authorities set goals, fund basic research, and police market abuses.
Tom McDonald’s Comments:
There is copious information that the traditional system of one to many teaching is broken and needs to be replaced with an instructor facilitated, student centric, truly personalized learning process, over time, to individually transfer critical, must know, information, long term, in the most effective and efficient way possible.
The status quo is not an option and the truly personalized, long term, learning issue will not occur without instructor facilitated, truly personalized learning technology
Tom
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