Old Math

Recently a tacky ABC news program offered competition as a mechanism to improve K-12 education. Simplistic; there is much more to education than what happens in school (what about education during the first 5 years of life? what about a culture that supports learning?) and competition is not a cure-all (what about rural areas? what about the kids that are left behind in a dreadful public school system?).

Competition is a good thing however and we should have more of it in K-12 education. In this state there is a rapidly growing charter school movement but vouchers were killed by the courts. There is also an open enrollment system, parents can send their child to any public school in the state that has a seat available.

I can understand that public school teachers don't like the idea of vouchers - compared to private sector jobs a public school teacher has lifetime tenure, good health benefits and a very nice retirement package. There are also philosophical objections. I can see how teacher unions don't like charter schools, most of which are non-union and offer better working conditions in exchange for lower pay.

But what puzzles me is the animosity of public school teachers to the idea of open enrollment. Teachers will complain one moment about how over-crowded the school is and in the same breath complain about the loss of students to other schools. It seems like the whole idea of competition in any form is repugnant.