When had you read anything to the contrary?

Just keep that in mind when you’re asserting the latest talking points on how education should be run like a business/measured like a business.

Yes ma’am.

How are you going to determine that the business model by which you are assessing a particular educational structure is in fact a.) appropriate and b.) successful over time? Some models work quite well in the short term, but are disasters when asked to perform over the long term.

Just like a business. I won’t, the customers will. If the school is doing well in customers’ eyes, more will come and the school and its employees will prosper. If customers don’t like it, they don’t come back and the school and employees go broke. Simple?

Business also follows fads and styles comparable to those of education, with the same degree of success.

Funny isn’t it? I’ll bet you can tell me about all the human organizations that don’t follow fads and trends. And I’m very impressed that you took business courses. I never did. They weren’t offered at my college.

If the government education monopoly had the same redundancy as the free market, i.e. multiple channels to success, then they could be held to the same admittedly lower standard that businesses are. But, since the government education monopoly is structured in such a way that it places the success or failure of a kid’s education on one school without an alternative, schools must necessarily be held to a higher standard to achieve the same result.

By the way, your repeated use of the phrase “business apologists” doesn’t make your argument any more reflective of reality. The simple fact is that the private sector, in aggregate, provides better results for consumers than does the public sector because the private sector provides alternatives.

However, it is rewarding to read your admissions that businesses can and do fail. Just keep that in mind when you’re asserting the latest talking points on how education should be run like a business/measured like a business. How are you going to determine that the business model by which you are assessing a particular educational structure is in fact a.) appropriate and b.) successful over time? Some models work quite well in the short term, but are disasters when asked to perform over the long term. Business also follows fads and styles comparable to those of education, with the same degree of success.

(Disclaimer: my undergraduate work included several business and economic courses, as well as management. I didn’t take ed courses until grad school. I’m rusty on some of this stuff, but it doesn’t mean I don’t know it.)

No, because they live in a Fantasyland where schools and educationists are all good, their jobs last for ever and their schools never fail whereas business people are evil, greedy, monsters who prey on innocents like educationists.

No, Fannie and Freddie are *perfect* examples of the hazards created by taxpayer backing. It’s not at all a chicken and egg problem.

The series of events is this:

1. Government creates Fannie and Freddie as corporations to expand credit availability backed (implicitly) by the full faith and credit of the US Treasury
2. Fannie and Freddie take incredible risks and practice accounting shadier than Enron because their backing allows them to get away with it.
3. Risks come back to bite Fannie and Freddie, and they get a bailout with no reform.

As for Social Security, one of its goals was to be self-sustaining. In that respect, it *is* failing this very moment, and will continue to fail backed by the taxpayers.

My point is this, only entities funded by the taxpayers get *rewarded* for failure with funding increases and bailouts. Business failures and competition are part of the reason that the private sector, in aggregate, outperforms the public sector.

That point about in aggregate is important, because the private sector can tolerate bad apples and incompetents and people still get what they want in the end. The public sector, offering no alternatives, doesn’t have the same level of flexibility, meaning each entity must be run well with no tolerance for failure. If the public sector were set up to encourage options and competition, the situation would be different.

“Quincy. You think Bear Stearns and Enron are the only business entities that have failed?”

Good grief, do you really not see that the point is that private companies can and do fail?

“Besides, the rumors of Social Security’s immanent demise have been circulating since my parents were on it, back in the late 70s. Funny, it’s still going strong, despite the best Republican efforts to kill it.”

Converse of above; that is, it’s a public undertaking and won’t fail.

No one is suggesting that biz is perfect.

However, there’s one important difference. When a biz fails, the people who invested in it or loaned money to it lose their money. The employees lose their jobs. Another biz that can do the job comes in and serves the customers.

A failed school lasts for decades, screwing generations of students.

For example, Bear Sterns and Enron investors lost their money and the employees lost their jobs. Some of the folks who loaned money to Bear Sterns were protected from their mistake, and that was wrong. That error is hardly reason to make the same error elsewhere. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will get protected because they’re politically connected. That’s also an error, an error that shouldn’t be followed elsewhere.

Teachers don’t have an obligation to try to get rid of bad teachers. However, if they don’t try to do so, they’re lying when they say that they’re there for the students.

No one forces teachers to demand contracts that protect bad teachers. Yet they consistently do.

BTW – Teachers aren’t “professionals” – they’re merely paid. Professionals are personally liable. Teachers aren’t.

There’s nothing wrong with not being a professional – most folks aren’t.