The K-12 Implosion by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Author:Glenn Harlan Reynolds [REYNOLDS, GLENN HARLAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59403-689-7
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The current system isn’t working. And, alas, neither are too many of its graduates.

Some people are more optimistic than others. While visiting at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, I spoke with a couple of their experts on educational reform and got two different takes.

Terry M. Moe, a professor of political science at Stanford and a senior fellow at Hoover, is gloomy about change from within. The essence of the American political system, he argues, is checks and balances – and those checks and balances make it easy for people to block change. With too many established interests vested in the status quo, political change is pretty much hopeless, he says. Instead, change will come because of technology. Educational technology, via things like online schools, the Khan Academy, and more, is making big waves. And because it’s often both much cheaper and better – and because Americans love technology and politicians oppose it at their peril – this technological revolution will overturn things from without.

Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow in education at the Hoover Institution, was more hopeful about political reform. In a recent book, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools, he outlines ways in which school financing can promote reform. He thinks pressure from parents, and the threat of competition, may be enough to drive change. Teachers unions are a powerful voting bloc, but they’re outnumbered by parents.

Both Moe and Hanushek also noted – as did several other people I spoke with in Palo Alto – the strong interest in new education platforms by a variety of start-ups. Many of these are focusing on college and graduate study, but others are working on K-12 education, and some of the approaches blur the line between the two. And with this degree of interest by start-ups, we’re likely to see more ferment in the future.

It seems clear, at any rate, that things can’t go on as they have. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t, and we can’t go on pumping more and more money into education while getting the same (or less) out.

So what’s next?

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