>>> [Yet another proposal for let's control schools to death >>> to produce quality according to plan]
>> I'm sure the National Education Association would really hate
>> this policy and that's pretty good evidence it's a good idea
> Excellent idea for a way schools can stay competitive.
Normally I'd agree that anything that's bad for the NEA is good for kids, but this idea is awful and anti-extropian. The way to keep schools competitive is just to let them compete; nothing more, nothing less. Just piling more and more tests and mandates and controls and other top-down imposed-order crap will just compound the bureaucracy. If you give bureaucrats power to make the sstate-imposed system better, they'll use that power for their own purposes, not those intended.
Why is there so much consternation about how to encourage parents to school their kids under a voluntary system when all of the available evidence proves that parents do in fact educate their children under such systems and always have? Education is a valuable product; whether parents purchase it because of expected reciprocity, or altruism, or civic duty, or whatever other reasons they come up with is irrelevant. The fact is that they do purchase it, and allowing providers to compete freely for their business is better for everyone.
Friedman has a lot of good education stuff on his web pages at <http://www.best.com/%7Eddfr/>.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC