Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 9: Coulson Markets Versus Monopolies in Education: The Historical Evidence

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8 July 1996

David O'Keefe

D.T.O-Keefe@sussex.ac.uk

Hopefully it's not to late to respond to Coulson's 'Markets Versus Monopolies in Education'.

1. It's an interesting and clearly written paper.

2. He has chosen interesting examples, though I question the relevance of examples from Sparta and Athens.

3. My main point: It is possible (and I think wise) to read his paper as an argument for 'decentralization' rather than 'privitization'. Decentralization is, after all, one of the many forms of privitization (see Bray, Mark (various recent years)). Decentralization is not a market response, rather it is about delegating authority to the local level. It is possible to decentralize curriculum decisions (thereby presumably making the curriculum more relevant) without privitizing the finance of education. This may be the best solution. In fact, there is generally more local control of education in the US than elsewhere in the world. For example, there is no national curriculum and local school boards have genuine power to effect change.

The concern I have about market solutions to education is of the danger that ability to pay will determine the quality of education one receives. Of course, already in the US, income clearly determines educational choice at all levels (see 'Savage Inequalities'). Further, I worry about the hidden agenda of market solutions which I believe is to break teacher unions. Have we collectively forgotten why teacher unions (and unions generally) arose? Does anyone believe that the world has changed since then in such a way as to obviate the need for organized labor in response to organized capital?

Rather, it seems that as capital has become more organized (resulting, inter alia, in GATT, the EC, and NAFTA), labor has become less so (see Freeman, Richard). We seem to have arrived at a very unhealthy level of political inequality between capital and labor. Not surprisingly, this seems to have resulted in the majority of people working more with less security and for a declining share of total income, with consequent societal effects.

Broadly, it seems to me that the 'market solution/privitization' agenda that has dominated the US since, say, 1980 has had numerous, rather ugly side effects. Among these are:

1. The dramatic rise in income inequality to historically record levels.

2. The stagnation of average wages.

3. The marked real decline in the minimum wage and social welfare benefits.

4. The rise in violent and drug-related crime, in response to which the US has imprisoned a higher proportion of its population than any other country in the world.

These seem obviously related to each other and to have obviously resulted from privatization and market solutions. Certainly, they have coincided with the rise of the privitization/market solutions agenda.

Are Americans satisfied with these results? Has the American society become a 'better society' (however that is defined)? It seems to me that as the increasingly privitized American society has become qualitatively worse (in my view), so too will increasingly privitized education become worse. This is not to say that greater decentralization of educational decision making is anything but good.