“[Arne] Duncan, President Obama’s education secretary, wants to take school turnaround efforts nationwide on a scale never tried before. In speeches and interviews, he said he would press local authorities to close thousands of the country’s worst schools, the dropout factories where only a tiny fraction of students are reading at grade level, and reopen them with new staff members. Mr. Duncan appears to have the money to drive the effort. Experts estimate the cost of overhauling a failing school at $3 million to $6 million. Mr. Duncan controls $3 billion in the economic stimulus law that could go to school turnarounds, and the administration’s 2010 budget requests $1.5 billion more.” (New York Times, Tuesday)
They’ll try anything but allow free-market competition.
FEE Timely Classic
“Government Schooling: The Bureaucratization of the Mind” by Thomas E. Lehman
