Principles and Principals

The Houston Chronicle reports that local politicians, educators, philanthropists, and business organizations have been discussing a plan for a new non-profit organization to take over several struggling schools in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). The effort is an attempt to stave off state sanctions over the chronic low performance at four HISD schools.

According to the paper,

To gain support for a private partnership, local leaders will have to clear several hurdles. They likely will have three to six months to craft governance plans and an academic framework for campuses, a relatively short time frame. They will have to get buy-in from several constituencies that often clash politically, including HISD trustees, school district administrators, teachers’ union leaders and residents in neighborhoods with schools facing takeover. The TEA also would have to approve any proposals.

This illustrates why this plan will ultimately fail–government schools are political institutions. As such, they are primarily governed by political considerations. And notice that those who pay for government schools–taxpayers–aren’t mentioned. They are the milch cows who are taken for granted. They are the ones who are forced to pay for every failed idea that educators and politicians can concoct.

If, as everyone involved in this plan seems to think, a private organization can do a better job, then why aren’t they embracing the idea fully? If a private organization can accomplish what politicians and bureaucrats have been unable to achieve, then why not simply abolish government schools and let private organizations provide all education?

While the focus of the plan is under performing schools, the principle applies to all schools. If a private organization can improve failing schools, then it can also improve better performing schools. Private organizations can make education better for everyone.

Unlike government schools, private schools (in all their variants) must satisfy their customers–parents and students–or they have to close their doors. They must offer the type and quality of education that consumers want. History shows us that when educational entrepreneurs are free to innovate, they can and do provide a wide variety of choices to students. (Click here to download the chapter “A Lesson in Private Education” from Individual Rights and Government Wrongs for free.)

Unfortunately, the principals involved in this plan do not understand the principles that they are implicitly endorsing. And that goes a long ways towards explaining why government schools have become a black hole that wastes enormous sums of money while failing to educate.