Should high school be outsourced? States test letting kids pick classes a la carte frm public & private vendors

Stephanie Simon:

Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White has a problem with schools.

They're too confining, he says. They trap kids in chairs, in classrooms, in the narrow bounds of an established curriculum. So White and a handful of fellow revolutionaries have begun pushing a new vision for American public education.

Call it the a la carte school.

The model, now in practice or under consideration in states including Louisiana, Michigan, Arizona and Utah, allows students to build a custom curriculum by selecting from hundreds of classes offered by public institutions and private vendors.

A teenager in Louisiana, for instance, might study algebra online with a private tutor, business in a local entrepreneur's living room, literature at a community college and test prep with the national firm Princeton Review - with taxpayers picking up the tab for it all.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 7, 2012 2:14 AM
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