The Case for the Private Sector in School Reform

Joel Klein

Given the costly chasm between the educational performance of U.S. students and those in other countries–and the shameful gap between white students and their black and Latino counterparts here at home–you’d think school improvement would be an all-hands-on-deck imperative in which the best minds in the public, private, and philanthropic sectors came together to lift our children’s prospects.
Yet such pragmatic problem,solving is threatened today by critics who condemn any private involvement in schools as a matter of “privatization,” “profiteering,” or worse. These ideological foes of business’ contribution to the public good ignore history in their attempt to protect a failed status quo. If their campaign to quash educational innovation succeeds, the real losers will be our kids.