Lean Production: Inside the war on public education

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80. I agree.

Treating education as a commodity is ridiculous. Which is why I didn't suggest it.

It's a service. Just as the other professions provide a service. I don't agree that education can't be run as a business.

The other professions that we've discussed on this thread typically have private sector employees and public sector employees. Attorneys have prosecutors that work for the government and defense attorneys that are frequently in the private sector and they go in front of a judge; another public sector employee. There are a lot of consulting engineering firms that work exclusively for the government, but they are a private firm and all of their work is reviewed by government employed engineers.

I think it strengthens these profession to have both groups. I expect that's an argument made by proponents of charter schools; I haven't heard it from anyone, but it makes sense to me.

I don't know that it would be a bad system to have a privately owned company that contracts out teachers to school districts. So that different companies could compete for contracts. This would require the state board of educators to oversee these companies in the manner that the state board of engineers oversees engineering firms.

An education firm could specialize in specific subjects and hire educators with those kind of degrees and laws could be passed to regulate these companies so that the profits can't be siphoned off to high paying administrators. School districts could employ a percentage of educators themselves and contract with a firm for a few or a lot; depending on need. Teachers could be required to submit a lesson plan and have that plan approved by the administration of the school.

This is similar to how civil engineering firms interact with state DOTs and municipalities. I don't think it would reduce the quality of education for children, it would give professional educators a public or private sector option and I expect it would be easier to identify bad educators and either improve their performance through intervention or get them out of the system.

Having businesses like this would not effect the existing system because the school district could decide not to utilize any outside help if there are problems with the services provided. One of the advantages of a setup like this is that an education firm could send different teachers to the classroom depending on the topic of the day as long as it is in compliance with their contract.

Obviously implementing a system like this would initially be really disruptive. I think once the contracts and expectations for both parties were worked out; there would be more flexibility since some of the educators wouldn't report directly to the principal but rather the principal would interact with the principal of the company.

State law could require that the company be owned by state certificated/licensed educators (just as most states require of engineering firms).

I don't believe that the education profession is so different from other professions that it couldn't take examples from other professions and implement those examples in the interest of creating more options for educators. What I'm suggesting here may seem stupid; it may not be practical, but I don't think it would hurt educators to look at how other professions treat their professionals and consider mimicking those practices that might benefit the individual educator without compromising the quality of education.