Education and Incentives, again.

Zane asks an interesting question: aren't we basically thinking about free-market incentives for education because the incentives faced by local school districts through local democracy aren't working very well?

I guess the answer is "yes," but with some caveats.

First off, there are many places around the United States where local democracy generates very desirable educational outcomes--these tend to be in places with strong civil society and healthy tax bases, generally affluent suburban school districts.

And, of course, there are lots of places where local school districts to a terrible job. Probably not coincidentally, these tend to be poor and they also tend to be places with a lot of other problems--crime-ridden inner-city school districts, islands in Maine where people shoot one anothers' cats for fun...

And there are some real questions about the ways we measure student achievement, both nationally and cross-nationally. Mostly, we use standardized tests, and there are some significant concerns about whether those really measure anything important about education.

But with some caveats, I think the answer is "yes." We're thinking about market incentives because out system isn't doing a very good job.

I guess, then, the important follow-up question is "Why isn't our existing system working very well?" Is it because local democratic incentives are failing, and if so, in what way?

Personally, my strongest impression is that local democratic incentives are failing, and the biggest reason is because the unwillingness of unions to allow the kind of market incentives that would encourage better teaching, which I guess contradicts what I assumed in my earlier post--that market incentives and local democratic incentives are somehow exclusive.

One related thing is that I think "reforms" like No Child Left Behind--which use neither market incentives nor local democratic pressures, but use a bureaucratic command-and-control model based, again, on standardized testing, is much less likely to solve our problems than attempting to re-invigorate either other type of incentive structure.