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The Cure for Sick Education Policies

By Shannon C’de Baca

In the ever-expanding conversations about how to fix the U.S. public education system, many reformers look to business models. Many of the business designs they admire are based on a specific product line with a manageable amount of differentiation and a profit model. Schools don’t fit that blueprint.

But perhaps we can draw some wisdom from industries in which the product is a service and the service is provided to a diverse clientele with a host of different needs and degrees of demand. From that type of service, business educators might find some pathways through the policy problems in which we’re currently entangled.

In my school there are code books full of policy. Many policies are amended, but most never die. They are often the political equivalent of the cockroach in the entomological world—not often noticed but capable...