Mr. Illyes has pretty obviously not spent a single minute in an actual school as a teacher at any level. As someone who has (40 years, STEM college and PhD level at an R1 university), I can tell him that his simplistic solutions will have a zillion issues, just as the for-profit online college industry does.
Not sure who runs this site, but I really expect a higher level of discourse than this free-market cheerleading from someone with zero relevant experience.
As someone who holds great appreciation of the power of markets to vastly improve products and services, it pains me to say that I don't think it will be market forces alone that right the problems with K-12 education in America. While such educational markets will be necessary, I don't think they will be sufficient.
For example, I think there needs to be a better answer for what performance standards will be used and who gets to decide on them. Consider that some of the best funded preparatory schools now take classes that explicitly immerse them in aspects Critical Race Theory and Gender Ideology because being sympathetic to these ideas absolutely gives students a leg up when it comes to admissions to elite universities. If we turn the market loose on the school system at large, it's entirely possible that the market finds the most efficient ways of disseminating this mind poison rather finding the best ways to impart knowledge.
Education is not just broken because those in charge don't know how to do it effectively. There are also major problems with their (along with a large number of modern educators) conception of what it actually means to be educated.
Richard, you basically have the right idea, but create too much opportunity for intentional, and unintentional political mischief; for example through testing and judging students' success as a basis for funding.
In my book, School System Reform, I describe why we're in the existential threat mess we're in, why central plan optimization cannot and will not yield a tolerably functional K-12 system - that includes charter schools - and how to move forward to an effective system. That is, I take political feasibility into account.
The two key features of the way forward are: 1) an end to the public funding discrimination against the children for whom the assigned school is a poor fit; and 2) price decontrol of alternatives to the assigned school. A level playing field, with price formation and adjustment to inform and motivate education entrepreneurship, will yield the relentlessly improving, diverse menu of schooling options that a diverse student population needs to realize its full potential as citizens and productive workers.
Mr. Illyes has pretty obviously not spent a single minute in an actual school as a teacher at any level. As someone who has (40 years, STEM college and PhD level at an R1 university), I can tell him that his simplistic solutions will have a zillion issues, just as the for-profit online college industry does.
Not sure who runs this site, but I really expect a higher level of discourse than this free-market cheerleading from someone with zero relevant experience.
As someone who holds great appreciation of the power of markets to vastly improve products and services, it pains me to say that I don't think it will be market forces alone that right the problems with K-12 education in America. While such educational markets will be necessary, I don't think they will be sufficient.
For example, I think there needs to be a better answer for what performance standards will be used and who gets to decide on them. Consider that some of the best funded preparatory schools now take classes that explicitly immerse them in aspects Critical Race Theory and Gender Ideology because being sympathetic to these ideas absolutely gives students a leg up when it comes to admissions to elite universities. If we turn the market loose on the school system at large, it's entirely possible that the market finds the most efficient ways of disseminating this mind poison rather finding the best ways to impart knowledge.
Education is not just broken because those in charge don't know how to do it effectively. There are also major problems with their (along with a large number of modern educators) conception of what it actually means to be educated.
Richard, you basically have the right idea, but create too much opportunity for intentional, and unintentional political mischief; for example through testing and judging students' success as a basis for funding.
In my book, School System Reform, I describe why we're in the existential threat mess we're in, why central plan optimization cannot and will not yield a tolerably functional K-12 system - that includes charter schools - and how to move forward to an effective system. That is, I take political feasibility into account.
The two key features of the way forward are: 1) an end to the public funding discrimination against the children for whom the assigned school is a poor fit; and 2) price decontrol of alternatives to the assigned school. A level playing field, with price formation and adjustment to inform and motivate education entrepreneurship, will yield the relentlessly improving, diverse menu of schooling options that a diverse student population needs to realize its full potential as citizens and productive workers.