In a nutshell, what are the arguments for and against privatizing education?
School privatization was born in the Reagan era, following efforts to privatize other sectors of the economy, notably health care. Proponents spoke of schools as the last government-run “monopoly.” Privatization, they said, would shatter that monopoly and introduce competition to the benefit of schools. “When you have the motivation of private gain, often what you have is improvement,” says Steven Wilson, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “Our entire culture is based on this notion, because people compete to do a better job.” Entrepreneurs thought they’d outshine the competition by cutting bureaucratic waste and delivering better results in the classroom. For opponents, the idea of companies running public schools for profit was a dangerous proposition, one that might ultimately corrupt education. “It puts the investor at the head of the list,” warned critics like Ted Sizer, a leading education reformer who prefers to operate in the public sector. “The children
