Saturday, February 6, 2016

Don't expect a system designed to regulate a monopoly to be good at regulating a marketplace

"Schools participating in voucher, tax credit, and education savings account programs are held accountable by the families who choose whether to enroll their children," Michael Q. McShane writes.
These families need good information to make that choice, so administering tests and making the results public is important, but private schools should not have to participate in the same regulatory scheme that governs public schools. We should never have expected a system designed to regulate a monopoly to be good at regulating a marketplace, and given that state-mandated testing regimes constrain what private schools can do, they ought to be reconsidered. The purpose of testing should be to inform the marketplace, not to impose a uniform vision of what makes a quality school. 

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