Reporter's Notebook

New York

Public education is in the grips of a dysfunctional government monopoly that must be broken by private entrepreneurs offering new models of schooling, according to the billionaire businessman Theodore J. Forstmann.

The Wall Street financier was the co-sponsor of a conference here last week for investors, policy analysts, and others interested in the growing business of education.

"A monopoly produces a bad product at a high price, and the education monopoly in America is no exception to that rule," said Mr. Forstmann, who is also the co- founder of the Children's Scholarship Fund, which provides partial tuition aid to help some 40,000...