Sunday, July 02, 2017

Why Government Schools Fail - Reason.com

Why Government Schools Fail - Reason.com:
"Every year, almost every industry improves.
We get more choices—usually better choices, for less money.
Photo Gallery: Production Images"But of all the products we make and the services we provide, there's one that stands out as an exception," according to the Cato Institute's Andrew Coulson.
"One activity in which excellence doesn't spawn countless imitators or spread on a massive scale: schooling."
Why not?
What can be done about it?
These questions are asked and often answered by Coulson's new PBS TV series School Inc. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/school-inc/
It's a wonderful three hours, reaching back years to America's first experiments in education and traveling the world to look at schools in Chile, England, Sweden, India and Korea. In Korea, top teachers make millions.
Why haven't American schools improved? 
The education establishment says, "We don't have enough money!"
But American schools spend more per student than other countries.
Spending tripled during Coulson's lifetime and class sizes dropped.
But test scores stay flat.
"Schools adopted all sorts of new technologies, from projectors to personal computers to 'smart' whiteboards," says Coulson.
"None of these inventions improved outcomes ... Educational quality has been stuck in the era of disco and leisure suits for 40 years, while the rest of the world has passed it by."
The main reason for that is that most schools are controlled by government. 
Government is a monopoly, and monopolies resist change..."
Read on!

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