A reader offers this comment about the education marketplace:
Better and cheaper aren’t even issues in the disruptive Educational marketing game. Only profit matters. Especially if you capture regulatory control, you can degrade quality to reduce cost, then mandate public funding to maximize profits. There’s no public sector, and no free market, to stop you.
I’ll quote again from Farrell:
“Christensen’s theory of innovation showed how “true revolutions occur, creating new markets and wreaking havoc within industries. Think: the PC, the MP3, the transistor radio.”
The wheel is still spinning on applications of internet and satellite “technology” in education. I’m a visionary and innovator myself, but in our classrooms, profit seekers are trying to freeze out wondrous real advances for their own advantage. Don’t confuse innovation with mean-minded little schemes to curtail and monetize other people’s inventions. The emperor is naked, and has no actual innovations to offer.
If you want to think more deeply than opportunistic market manipulation, here’s Anil Dash’s magnificent rumination on the internet, The Web We Lost:
http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-we-lost.html
He also understands the wheels are still spinning, and proposes ways to bring the internet back into the commons, where (like public education) it belongs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane-
This blog post, which I accessed through Naked Capitalism, while based on UK economics, is relevant to the ongoing debate regarding the privatization of public schools in our country:
As a consultant in rural districts in small towns in VT and NH (whose poverty is as daunting as some urban areas) I found his paragraph particularly relevant:
“The primary concern of the Public Service should be social efficiency; otherwise it is rendering itself obsolete. It is not cost efficient to provide post offices in villages, free meals and milk in schools, small local hospitals and local doctor surgeries. The commercialisation of these public services demands they strip out unnecessary costs. But from a social efficiency perspective these are good ideas. If amenities are removed from villages they become unviable. Hungry, malnourished children struggle to learn and are more likely to suffer behavioural problems, so free school meals and milk alleviate this. Localised health services will be more easily accessible, personal and responsive to local people.”
The article contains many UK-USA comparisons.
Our society looks for the quick fix. Quick fixes are easier, provide immediate gratification and they show near instant impact on the bottom line. But many times they are vital feeders to long term results and sustainability. The impact to the overall equation may not show up immediately, but more times than not it will eventually rear its ugly head. In some industries it is not life or death, but in education it most certainly is………. and that, in my opinion is where it becomes a much different endeavor than any other industry. Not just for students, but a society dependent on our ability to properly educate and prepare every generation to become both personally productive as well as a collectively productive member of society. Physically and intellectually starved students is unacceptable……..
This article leaves me nearly speechless. I can barely find the words to describe how I feel about this type of thinking.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/03/28/tennessee-bill-parents-pay-back-welfare-students-fail?cmpid=wfs-fb#.UVWgqmRXG10.twitter
If this is the foundation for our “revolutionary” solution for education then we are going down a very dark, dangerous and dead end path. It is our job as educators and education solution designers to build solutions that INSPIRE and ENABLE not INTIMIDATE. This fear based method makes no sense from a neurological perspective where it has been proven that fear blocks decision-making, memory, communication, and creativity or an emotional perspective where mere survival is a human’s first biological instinct – water, food, shelter, clothing, etc. When you take that away from a family that is teetering on the edge of mere survival you spin more panic and fear in their life and education moves further and further down their list of priorities. (students suffer the most).
We are delusional if we think we can force them to learn. Going so far as to dangle food to force our agenda is BARBARIC……..
We are quickly and dangerously losing sight of a cold hard fact and working from the misconception that somehow “learning” is mandatory………(there is nothing that can FORCE them to learn and taking basic human needs away from them that doesn’t even allow their bodies to function is insane). “Education” (seat time, class attendance, grade advancement, graduation) might be mandatory……… You can always take the easy way out and find ways to “require” or “demand” that a student show up, sit in a seat and be physically present, but if we are going to break through and “actually” re-establish the value of education to any one individual (which is why I do my job and I believe the vast majority of educators also) we are all going to have to accept and “embrace” the cold hard fact that true, genuine and effective “learning” is completely and totally VOLUNTARY……….
We can’t build 21st century education on the basis that we can judiciously require a student to sit in a seat, learn and move to the next grade and a parent to actively and meaningfully participate simply because we “said so” and pile on penalties that directly affect their mere survival.
Forgive me but that’s the easy way out……………..and I don’t know about you, but I believe I can dig deeper and tap into my own intelligence and creativity to build solutions and programs that make education compelling and personally relevant…….which is far more powerful and effective in achieving the end goals that we all desire for all students.
Yes, what I am proposing requires all of us, educators and education solution designers to DO A BETTER JOB. We must focus on dynamic, engaging and systemic solutions that “compel” them to learn, make it relevant to their own lives and give them back hope for a future through education and knowledge. In my opinion, then and only then will we truly see education make a difference and change lives like we all know it can if done right. This article makes me angry…….but it also motivates me to work harder and dig deeper for better solutions. Not short term fixes, but true transformation for any child, anywhere, under any circumstances.
That’s an excellent summary. If these guys really thought they’d figured out a better way to educate kids, you would think they’d start a completely private school, and enroll their own kids and the kids of their rich friends to prove they know what they are doing before they get dime one of tax dollars to run a charter.