Education Matters US

In a recent study by the Friedman Foundation entitled “Disruptive Behavior: An Empirical Evaluation of School Misconduct and Market Accountability” the objective was to find out if Market Accountability was a good regulator of school conduct as compared to Bureaucratic Accountability used with our government school monopoly. (Hat tip: Extreme Wisdom)

I will excerpt some of the strength and weaknesses from both accountability models [Emphasis mine]:

Bureaucratic Accountability

• Strengths
  • The ability of regulators to command, investigate and punish schools and their employees gives regulatory accountability powerful strengths. (p. 11)
• Weakness
  • regulatory accountability by its nature must follow formal procedures that are the result of political and legal decision-making. The rules that govern regulatory accountability are matters of politics and law, so they reflect other factors besides simply the desire to protect children. (p.11)
  • A district that cannot afford to give teachers a raise may instead offer them greater insulation from regulatory accountability systems. (p.12)
  • The collective bargaining power of teachers’ unions helps them install procedure obstacles to regulatory accountability. Public school teachers accused of misconduct are entitled to a cumbersome, quasi-judicial adversarial process, including representation by union advocates and lengthy appeals. Firing a school employee, even one who is guilty of a heinous offense, takes years of costly, labor-intensive procedures. (p. 12)

Market Accountability

• Strengths
  • The strengths of market accountability are largely a mirror image of the weaknesses of regulatory accountability. Market accountability is carried out by parents who will be far more strongly motivated than even the most well-meaning regulator. (p. 13)
  • their decision-making processes are solely their own and solely concerned with the well-being of their children. (p.13)
  • They can just withdraw their children from that school and put them in another one that has better safeguards against misconduct. (p. 13)
• Weaknesses
  • Private schools typically conduct internal audits and adopt procedural safeguards against misconduct …… However, these practices are not under the direct control of the parents. Parents cannot tell private schools what safeguards to adopt; they can only choose among the available schools based on procedures that exist at those schools. (p. 13)
  • Parents cannot conduct investigations or audits to independently confirm whether schools follow their own procedures effectively. (p. 13)

Conclusion

This study proves what I have stated before, “schools will never be accountable until parents are in control.” Parents will almost always do a better job of protecting their children that a government bureaucrat. A set of written rules will never be able to judge character and motive. It will never be able to see shades of grey in a situation. It is only as good as the people who write it and then it will only see black and white. These written regulations has brought us zero tolerance for guns where pictures of guns have brought suspensions, kids turning in found guns have brought suspensions and other ridiculous rulings because a government bureaucrat only does what is written on a piece of paper and not what is good for the children.

Parents on the other hand look at the entire situation and use common sense and logic to determine what is best for their child. They understand that a teacher who is making sexual advances should be fired to protect their child and other children. With school choice they have this power to demand it. If the school does not follow through, they lose students and money. Government schools can take years to fire a teacher like this and often it is after a lengthy and costly process. Sometimes these teachers are allowed to resign and they move on to another school. You can find many examples of how poorly the government regulatory accountability works with the series of articles on The Hidden Cost of Tenure done by Scott Reeder of the Small Newspaper Group.

Bureaucracy is not the answer for educating our children. Parental choice is the answer. It is time to fund each and every child equally; allow the parents to choose which school their children will attend; the money then follows the child to that school. This forces all schools to be accountable to the parents and to earn their trust. This trust will entail both the educational outcome for the child and the safety of that child.

It is time to stand up to the teachers’ unions and tell them enough is enough. We will no longer permit you to protect failing and dangerous teachers. We will no longer allow you to use children as hostages for financial gain against the taxpayers and parents. We will not tolerate the poor educational outcomes because of your pension for self indulgence and self aggrandizing. We are going to put parents back in charge of their child’s education. Trust and respect are not a right, they are a privilege, and you will have to earn them from the parents once again.