The Economist article --which is not a view from the other side of the pond but a localized article for US consumption-- has been discussed elsewhere on CC.
Fwiw, I could not disagree more about which school “overhaul” has been a bandaid. Considering how Al Shanker, the feisty union leader endorsed charter schools, one can only begin to understand why that was! In so many words, the charter school movement all but killed any meaningful reform that might have broken down the monopolistic control of our education system. Adding charters to the “choice” but maintaining the tight leash on the schools via short term “charter” contracts and funding impediment was the bandaid by excellence, and one akin to place it on wooden leg.
The same can be said for the US version of school choice and vouchers, which are poor examples of a free and open system such is known in the country that had the intelligence and fortitude to protect school choice (free in all terms of the word) through their constitution. And it should be noted that this protection did NOT stop the same type of corrupt forces that have undermined the US system for six decades to attempt to eliminate the choices that brought better and more competitive schools (look up Belgium Flanders) to its citizens. Contrary to what my esteemed poster above intimated, there are free “markets” that work, and some work very well. They do, however, require a level playing field and not one that is seeded with determined time bombs. The US few examples were designed to … fail, and that includes the abomination that is represented by the charter schools that simply rebranded a system with similar actors.
Before we can allow to have “good” and “bad” schools flourish, we need to allow them to compete on the same playing field. Most of the dialogue is a canard of epic proportions that is based solely on the desire to “protect” the deadwood in the system, namely overpaid administrators that benefit from union support, bad teachers who are able to rely on tenure and an obnoxious anti-firing mechanism, and most importantly, the VERY poor teachers who are culled from the worst colleges and are starting unprepared and untrained for the job and are … paid accordingly. The current system rewards nothing else than utter mediocrity. We need to let bad schools fail and assume that many teachers should not find similar employment for the only reason they have been there a long time!
The reality is that, for its amount of spending, our country deserves MUCH better schools and an adaptive system that correctly recognizes the needs from both the advanced students and the unfortunate who suffer from handicaps. Our one size fits all has been an unmitigated disaster that is only analyzed through the lens of an ostrich.
There is a place for unions in this new education system, but it should not be in its current cancerous form. The unions should be open to different ideas and not be one that presents a lockstep ideology. Their role should be the mere one of a trade union and they should have no say on the organization of the system nor be allowed to control the schools and school boards through their massive amount of raised (read extorted) money. There are no other party that are as directly responsible for the poor state of education in our public high school. They have been given the chance to run our schools by the abject abandonment of our politicians’ duties, and they have failed miserably as unions have no interest in the families or the students, except their own.
Lastly, the diversion of money is one of the dumbest and unsupported argument ever. As much as it is the weapon of choice for many opposed to market reform, the math simply does not support. But cooked books are the domain of academia. Too bad that dear Lani looked at the wrong side of our education system. Rather than focus on Harvard, she should have stuck to issues where she made her mark.