Schools Should Be Run Like Businesses

I found a fabulous quote over at Bending the Twigs that nicely sums up problems facing government-run schools. It's from a former corporate CEO named Jamie Robert Vollmer. He was giving a speech to government schoolteachers about how schools should be run more like businesses when a veteran English teacher asked what happened if his ice cream business received a sub par shipment of raw ingredients. He admitted that he would send it back:

"And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night."

You can read the full Education Week article from which the quote was taken here.

Even if a business receives "quality ingredients" the whole approach of a business has nothing to do with nurturing or igniting imaginations. Business is all about efficiency, cookie cutter, meeting deadlines. . . If I had not found a school of the caliber of my son's (and if I did not teach there ) -- I would definitely home school.