For-Profit Education Companies Are Growing Fast

In today's market, one can argue that the customer drives the market. If a product line does not produce adequately, or there is a functional problem with that particular product, it stands to reason that the corporation would fix the problem, discontinue the product line, or lose profit, go into the red, and sink into bankruptcy if they do not change, right?

So, then, applying this same concept to the education "industry," why are our schools still afloat despite such "product line" setbacks, and a general malaise when it comes to much needed systemic changes? Why our people so resistant to change in the public school sector, or even in higher education? For too long, school personnel have been sheltered from the reality of the free market, with various protections ranging from tenured faculty positions to union representation. This outmoded way of life is neither productive nor logical, and it has not only manufactured a feeble product line in its teachers, but in its student "customers" as well.

What are the options? Well, one could uproot one's family and move to Belgium or Japan to find a better production of effective educational programming. There are various charter schools that promise different things for your child, and of course private tutoring and private schooling, which research suggests produces a student of only marginally higher quality. The broader picture suggests that a new product line needs implementation, and the suggestion is that there is a relatively new player in town: for-profit corporate schooling.

The model alone provides a new, sleeker way of educating America's youth. If the school does not produce, it does not make a profit, and it shuts down. Poorly performing schools will close; better performing schools will prosper and continue therefore to improve. This is the way every other business in the market works, and when these rules are applied to education, it works. The rising tides will lift all boats.

Take for example the Camelot for Kids enterprise. Based out of Texas, this multi-state corporation contracts with failing school districts to run their educational programming and to turn the schools, or part of the school system, toward a positive growth pattern. Their goal is to meet the demands of the contract, and to do it well. Student progress is monitored closely, and there are high expectations on its at-will employees. However, the system works. Camelot for Kids has been profiting, expanding, and improving young lives and their education. There is little room for apathy, or for stagnation. For profit school systems must stay the best at what they do, or they will fail as a corporation.

The governor of Pennsylvania has made massive cuts to the funding of state schools. Public schools limp along without proper funding, without proper resources or personnel, and are only kept afloat because of our national mandate of Free and Public Education (FAPE.) What is this doing? It is causing students who can't think, teachers who have to be better politicians than educators, and ultimately, it is hurting the strength of our economy by producing poor workers and weak leaders. If the model would change, and corporate, for-profit models could compete on a larger scale than they currently are allotted, then teachers would become practitioners again, schools would either succeed or close, and the economy will flourish from the expanding nature of the corporate enterprise. What are we waiting for?