Competition makes a better mousetrap - so why not schools?
May 24, 2007

By Peter Bronson
Cincinnati Enquirer

Let's suppose Acme Widget builds a better mousetrap. People beat a path to their door and even sleep in lawn chairs overnight just to get on a waiting list.

Amalgamated Widget, meanwhile, spends millions to build new factories and gives raises to its workers - but they don't build better mousetraps. They tell customers they're stuck with the old ones and raise prices while sales drop 28 percent.

That's not from Bankruptcy for Dummies. Amalgamated Widget is Cincinnati Public Schools.  

In April, Chris Kearney of Westwood waited all night to sign his son up for a popular magnet school, Dater Montessori. Kearney was first in a line of 60 parents, but he was told there was no place for his "non-black male" son, the Enquirer reported.

His son eventually got in, but Kearney said, "It makes no sense to ration something that is wildly popular."

Here's something else that makes no sense: While enrollment has dropped 28 percent in the past 10 years, CPS is spending hundreds of millions on new schools and will soon ask for a tax hike for more spending.

Obviously, CPS is not a business or it would be way past Chapter 11, somewhere in Chapter 23 of bankruptcy by now. Public schools were not created to make a profit. They were created to profit society by educating children. There are many dedicated teachers and good schools in CPS.

But Kearney's right: Why not respond to demand for more magnet schools that keep families in CPS and in the city?

Maybe it's because government monopolies don't have to care what customers want. And they don't want competition from vouchers and charter schools that do as well or better at 70 percent of the cost. So Gov. Ted Strickland is trying to give teacher unions what they want: kill vouchers and charters that give choices to poor families.

"I can't think of another government service that costs the same or less, people want it, and we're trying to take it away," said Ohio House Speaker John Husted. "The people who want to stop school choice are very well funded and in control."

Recently, state lawmakers were spammed by thousands of e-mails - all saying exactly the same thing: "I urge you to support Governor Strickland's plan to end Ohio's EdChoice private school voucher program and make sure that public money goes to public schools."

Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester, called it "massive intimidation" by state teacher unions.

But he and Husted said they were more impressed by a rally the same week in Columbus by 1,800 parents and children who want to save vouchers and charter schools.

"It's hard to look a child in the face who is succeeding and tell them you're taking that away," Husted said.

Maybe Ohio should borrow an idea from New Zealand: Choice for everyone.

New Zealand schools were failing 30 percent of their students, especially in poor neighborhoods. "We had put more and more money into education for 20 years and achieved worse and worse results," wrote former member of parliament Maurice P. McTigue.

So parents were allowed to choose any school - public or private - and the money would follow each student. "Again, everybody predicted there would be a major exodus of students from public to private schools, because the private schools showed an academic advantage of 14 to 15 percent," McTigue wrote. "It didn't happen."

Instead, public schools caught up academically in two years, because "teachers realized that if they lost their students they would lose their funding (and) their jobs," he wrote.

Enrollment in public schools actually increased, and student performance rose from 15 percent below international averages to 15 percent above.

Ohio is not New Zealand. But the kiwi solution could eliminate property-tax levies that superintendents and teacher unions hate, while giving families the ultimate in local control, equality and accountability.

Failing monopoly schools are mousetraps for students. Competition makes everything else better - why not education?