The Great Debate

In this excerpt from “The Good School: How Smart Parents Get Their Kids the Education They Deserve,” author Peg Tyre explains how the educational “free market” created by the charter school system doesn’t guarantee parents will pick the best schools for their kids. In fact, with objective information hard to come by, even more pressure is on parents to gain — and exploit — data about school quality in order to outperform the educational market.

The idea that school choice is automatically better than no choice has recently been reinforced again, with the “Parent Trigger” in California. Under a law passed there last year, parents whose children attend underperforming public schools can get together, and if 51% of them sign a petition, they can demand their district change the school administrators or convert the school to a charter. So far, a parent group from Compton “pulled the trigger,” but parents from poor urban schools and well-funded suburban schools have been seeking information on how to use the Parent Trigger law to improve their schools.

Similar bills, which are supported by education reformers on both sides of the political aisle, have been passed in Connecticut, Ohio and Mississippi. About a half dozen state legislatures—including New York — are expected to consider Parent Trigger type bills this year.

When it comes to education, this may well be The Year of The Parent. For decades, educational professionals have talked about the importance of “parental engagement” to insure positive outcomes for kids. But in the past, the limits of that engagement have been clear. Parents were expected to show up for parent teacher conferences, chaperone a class trip and maybe whip up some cookies for a bake sale. Suddenly, with the rise of the Parent Trigger, and similar measures around the country, parent engagement may start to truly become a force that pushes schools toward real reform.

Not sure you are up to the task?  Blame Milton Friedman. For the last forty years, economists have urged education reformers to unleash the power of the free market. If parents, the most highly motivated stakeholders in the education process, the theory goes, were given a choice about where to send their kids to school, and the state and federal funding followed each student, good schools would thrive and bad schools would wither and die.

The following is a guest contribution from Mark Kantrowitz, founder and publisher of finaid.org and fastweb.com. The opinions expressed are his own.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which starts operating on Thursday, has oversight and enforcement authority over private education loans and most private education lenders.

The Private Education Loan Ombudsman within the CFPB will respond to complaints about private education loans by students and their families and will help mediate borrower disputes with education lenders on an informal basis. Here are my recommendations to improve the private loan process.

The following is a guest post by Bruce Yandle, distinguished adjunct professor of economics with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the College of Business & Behavioral Science at Clemson University. The opinions expressed here are his own.

Last month’s report on U.S. employment growth brought no cheer to job-seekers with a high school education.

In June 2010, the unemployment rate for adults 25 or older with a high school diploma was 10 percent. Whereas unemployment among college educated adults was 4.4 percent. (Overall unemployment was 9.5 percent.)

The following is a post by Stephen Adler, editorial director of Thomson Reuters professional, that was taken from one of his blog posts at aif.thomsonreuters.com. Adler is a moderator at some of the panels at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Thomson Reuters is one of the underwriters of the event. The opinions expressed are Adler’s own.

Bill Gates, the former tech-nerd-genius, seems increasingly comfortable in his post-Microsoft role as philanthropist, humanist, and Big Thinker. Once awkward in public, he now speaks with warmth and authority about health policy, education, energy, and global innovation. His air of sincerity, hyperlinked to his extraordinary intellect, has turned him into a crowd favorite –- perhaps the crowd favorite –- at events such as the Aspen Ideas Festival.

In his hour onstage inside the giant Benedict Music Tent Thursday afternoon, before the largest audience I’ve seen at the Festival, Gates insisted he was optimistic about the future. He got a big laugh by adding the caveat that to stay optimistic you have to “avoid getting exposed to U.S. politics.” In particular, he cited enormous improvements in healthcare, education, and women’s rights over the past 50 years. The most startling statistic: Deaths of children under five declined globally from 20 million in 1960 to 8 million last year, mostly due to vaccines and better malaria prevention and treatment.

– Joan Wasser Gish is a consultant in the Boston area. A former senior policy adviser to Senator John Kerry, she recently testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship. The views expressed are her own. –

When the toys are put away and the last youngster is picked up for the day, early childhood education providers like all other entrepreneurs sit down to assess their revenues, account for expenses and make difficult business decisions. And though their services are rife with hugs and games and songs, their work has serious implications for the economy. The child-care sector is a critical driver of economic growth and workforce development. That is why financial leaders and policymakers should do more to support providers as both educators and small-business entrepreneurs.

There are more than 400,000 licensed child-care facilities across the country. They span the economic sectors, with the majority run as sole proprietorship home-based businesses, and the rest split between for-profit and non-profit centers offering early education and care. Most are run by women, and a significant proportion are owned and operated by members of minority groups. Because of the early education and care services they provide, they contribute to both short- and long-term economic growth.