PUTTING SCHOOLS INTO MARKETPLACE DOESN'T WORK

Related
Links

American
Association
of School
Administrators

PUTTING SCHOOLS INTO MARKETPLACE DOESN'T WORK
by Anne C. Lewis for America Tomorrow

SAN DIEGO--Those who propose creating competition among schools in order to improve them, such as with vouchers and other forms of privatization, are wrong. Great Britain tried it, and the idea failed.

This is the message brought to American school administrators by the head of the Society of Education Officers, the British equivalent of the American Association of School Administrators. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced the market economy to schools in the 1980s, creating "grant-maintained" schools that were independent of government regulations. The government also produced a national curriculum, a voluminous set of standards in 12 subject areas that was "undoable," as far as teachers were concerned, according to Philip Hunter. It established an information system for parents based on reports made by outside investigative teams.

These ideas didn't work, Hunter told the annual conference of school administrators here. The government had to offer large bribes to schools to apply for grant-maintained status, he said, and those that accepted became competitive businesses. Only 1,200 of the country's 25,000 schools took the bribes. The national curriculum had to be rewritten. The investigations did not produce improvements in schools. In fact, on the basis of student test scores, more schools regressed in the first year after their inspection than improved.

The change in government brought changes in education policy, Hunter said. The Labour Government reduced the mandated curriculum to four key subjects instead of the dozen of the previous government. It is supporting a change in the law creating the grant-maintained schools, which eventually may be phased out. The approach of the Labour Government is "support and challenge," rather than compete, Hunter said. "After all, we are in the public service, not a business."

Hunter noted that British policy makers listened to the "crazies in the United States who were pushing marketplace treatment of schools and adopted the idea, but you were smart enough not to do it."