Obama said he'd test programs on the basis of whether or not they worked.

Only out of every four applicants gets a voucher.

Clearly, that system is not working. It tells poor students: "Your public schools suck. But if you're lucky or clever enough to rise above it, you can get a voucher. But if you're not, you're stuck in it."

The question is: how to make all schools perform at the level of good private schools for their students? This does not mean how to make all schools into Exeter, but rather to ensure that every school serves its students and their goals and abilities best.

Re: "Only out of every four applicants gets a voucher.

"Clearly, that system is not working. It tells poor students: "Your public schools suck. But if you're lucky or clever enough to rise above it, you can get a voucher. But if you're not, you're stuck in it."

Um, the system before the voucher availability was not working either, and wasn't going to change. A 25 percent positive change in the DC black student performance is a very, very good thing, and, by the way, I'm not of the view that we should starve public schools to turn the entire system into a private enterprise.

Fact is that the Administration killed this program as a political act, not as a way to improve the failing system. (The cost of educating K-12 students in many areas of the US is equal to or more than the price of private schools.)

Indeed, TG, sacrifice is an integral part of education; in this case the Moloch that the greedy teachers' unions have become--and the current administration wishes to satisfy at any cost, needs sacrificial children.

Fact is that the Administration killed this program as a political act, not as a way to improve the failing system.

As I've pointed out in an earlier thread, this entire affair has been political from the start, when the Republican Congress imposed vouchers on the District (something they never could have done if DC had full autonomy). That being said, vouchers have become quite popular.

Matt wrote:

Clearly, that system is not working. It tells poor students: "Your public schools suck. But if you're lucky or clever enough to rise above it, you can get a voucher. But if you're not, you're stuck in it."

So you kill the program, even though its value lies as much in its demonstration of how success can be achieved as in the number of students who directly benefit from it.

The improved message becomes: "If everyone can't have it, nobody can." And thus does the perfect kill the good.

Try applying that logic to criminal justice: "Since we can't punish all rapists equally — because of luck, economic or social position — we should punish none of them."

Dysfunctional organizations and institutions are not generally fixed--when they are fixed at all--through some galactic effort to change the whole thing at once. Rather, they are fixed by establishing islands of excellence, within which things are done in a different way and which can serve as models and competition for the other parts of the institution.

When GM launched the Saturn product line, it was originally intended as kind of an industrial version of a charter school. It was organized pretty much as a true business unit, with its own engineering, it own marketing, and its own dealers, and also had factories (or segments of factories--can't remember which) within which it had been agreed with the union that labor relationships would be conducted in a different way than elsewhere in the corporation. Unfortunately, at pretty much the first sign of difficulty, the functional barons within GM succeeded at getting Saturn pulled back into the blob, and it continued as a brand name rather than as a distinct business.

Had GM top management had more guts and vision, they would have built on the idea of Saturn as a new way of doing things, made it succeed, and eventually used it to teach and inspire the rest of the company. They might not now be looking at bankruptcy.

The relevance to education should be clear.

David Foster, I think that you make important points about thinking outside the box, experimenting, creating islands of excellence, etc. The DC voucher program's (somewhat limited) success is interesting, but the jury is out on whether it is a model for the future, or whether the long-term effect of such programs is to set back the larger cause of education reform by creating "haves" and "have-nots" and thus undermining the political consensus behind public education. (While I'm sure that many voucher advocates are sincere, it has not escaped my attention that vouchers are a stalking horse for anti-public education ideologues.)

PeterS..."anti-public education ideologues"...charter schools really *are* a form of public education...the fact that they have more autonomy in their management practices than do conventional schools does not mean they're not part of the government's education program, any more than the significant autonomy enjoyed by state universities means that they're not really "state" universities.

"...when the Republican Congress imposed vouchers on the District (something they never could have done if DC had full autonomy)."

What do you mean by "autonomy"? Rhetoric about taxation without representation notwithstanding, under its present charter, the District has no less self-government than most cities: its relationship to Congress is similar to the relationship of a typical city to the state legislature. If most of the District were retroceded to Maryland, which would be the least constitutionally problematic or questionable way for DC residents to gain the benefits of statehood, they wouldn't be free of regulation from Annapolis either, any more than Arlington or Alexandria--which were once part of the District--are beyond the writ of things they might disagree with coming out of Richmond.

Dave J,

It would be politically inconceivable for a state legislatures to engage in the kind of mischief that Congress does, for the simple reason that they would have to answer to the voters. The difference between DC and Alexandria and Arlington is that the citizens of the latter two jurisdictions vote for state legislators AND congressional representative. DC, by contrast, has no representation in Congress and no representation in any body with the kind of autonomy and rights that states typically have. You can read about the history of home rule here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_home_rule