In For a Penny, In For a Pound

The idea or question has been bouncing around in my head for a while. The huge push to corporatize public education in this country has been damaging to the overall quality of education as well as to the profession. But perhaps part of the damage has been a lack of resolve, dues to a half hearted effort. After all, if you are going for ideological dogmatism, why not go all the way.

First we would need to have a public offering and see how many investors would pony up significant cash to run a business with a steady stream of raw material of variable quality and a constant demand for high quality output, regardless of the revenues. The apparent first managerial decision would have to be to reduce output and drive up the unit price using the supply and demand market based theory. If far fewer people graduated from public education, then the amount that employers would be willing to pay for such “skilled” workers would increase and the willingness to invest in the enterprise should also rise.

Second, the employers would need individuals who were adept at critical thinking and problem solving. These would be the valued output criteria for the select few who would graduate. As a result, standardized testing would be shelved and the emphasis would shift to professional teachers who demonstrated high skills and talent for producing students with initiative, creativity and ingenuity. These teachers would be highly paid in line with maximizing production of the proper students.
Finally, the basic corporate principle of profit and efficiency would prevail, and schools that were unable to efficiently produce adequate product with available resources and expertise would simply have to close. If the schools were not adequately funded by investors, they would be shut down or “mothballed.”

Memphis, Tennessee has taken a page from this manifesto. The school district has decided that if it does not have the necessary resources from the city to operate the school district; it simply will not open schools. The school year has been delayed indefinitely. More school districts should seriously consider this practical option. If the state and local government do not wish to fund the operation of public education, then schools should simply close their doors until the funding is made available. Instead, school districts routinely open schools with grossly inadequate staffing and resources which means that the chances of producing students that meet the desired quality outputs are negligible. Would any responsible capitalist invest in losing money in order to produce a product that is below standards of accept ability in the market? Of course many parents would be very unhappy to see the great majority of schools closed, and especially if their children do not gain admission to the few remaining “profitable” schools.

If a corporatized educational system is what is really desired, then as the saying goes: “in for a penny, in for a pound!”