Make Public Schools More Like Private

By Adam Urbanski

It will take a lot to make public schools more effective for all students: greater academic rigor; higher standards of conduct; more parental involvement; stronger incentives for the students themselves; and, of course, more access to health and social services for the many students who are in need of such. Everyone knows this, yet some continue to call for privatization, vouchers, and other schemes that would allow parents to spend public money to send their children to private schools.

Such a defeatist approach is both irrational and unnecessary—especially since we have not yet tried to fix that which truly ails public education in this country. It confuses "helping" public schools with "dismantling" public schools. The cure would be worse than the disease. Instead of giving up on public schools altogether—which is precisely what would happen if we drained them of resources by diverting public funds to private schools—why not make public schools more like private?

What makes private schools different from public schools? Is it that they have better teachers? Hardly. Teachers in public schools are just as dedicatedand often more credentialedthan teachers in private schools. Better students, then? No. The fact that more public school children are poor does not mean that they are less intelligent. And while family support and readiness to learn are, indeed, relevant factors, they are not insurmountable hurdles—if we accelerate our efforts to coordinate education reform with reforms in health...