More Incentives Would Drive Schools To Improve, Business Alliance Argues

By Mark Walsh

More incentives for schools, educators, and students are needed to pick up the pace of improving public education, a major business group advises in a new report.

The National Alliance of Business, a 5,000-member organization that focuses on workforce-competitiveness issues, argues for more competition-related initiatives in the schools. The Washington-based group is promoting a wide range of incentives, such as school report cards, schoolwide rewards for achievement and penalties for failure, public school open enrollment, charter schools, and promotion "gates" and graduation "hurdles" for students.

"The private sector encourages hard work, innovation, and high standards through the risks and rewards of competition," the report says. "But in public schools, educators and students have faced few consequences for their failures and even fewer...