Yesterday an education panel was held [1] at the New York Public Library. The panel, sponsored by the Wall Street Journal and Intel Corporation, starred three leftists who continued “the ongoing debate inside the Democratic Party about how to transform public schools.”
Interestingly, one speaker, law school dean Christopher Edley from UC-Berkeley, mentioned his fear that President Obama “could end up relying too heavily on competition as a lever to spur change” in public schools.
Yes: rather than rely on the free market, which would allow parents to dictate the changes in education, and which would require speedy changes from individual schools to accommodate higher parental standards in education, Edley would rely on government regulation. From the article:
Forcing schools to compete for students and to stay open will not alone improve them. Schools also need to be regulated, he said.
Because at least in Edley’s mind, it is clear that the government knows better than parents and school administrators about what would make a school worth going to.
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center [2], a training program run by Accuracy in Media [3] and Accuracy in Academia [4].
*Blog entries by interns reflect their personal opinions only and not that of Accuracy and Academia.