ERIC Number: ED538526
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Nov
Pages: 15
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Focus on For-Profits in K-12 Education Misses the Real Divide. Special Report 7
Hernandez, Alex
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
For decades, for-profit educational provision has been merely tolerated, often grudgingly. In the world of charter schooling, for-profit providers are lambasted and sometimes prohibited. In higher education, for-profit institutions have grown rapidly, enrolling millions of nontraditional students and earning enmity, suspicion, and now investigative and regulatory actions from the federal government. When it comes to student lending, teacher quality, and school turnarounds, there is a profound preference for nonprofit or public alternatives. All of this is so familiar as to be unremarkable. The problem is that K-12 and higher education are desperately in need of the innovative thinking and nimble adaptation that for-profits can provide in a landscape characterized by healthy markets and well-designed incentives. American Enterprise Institute's (AEI's) Private Enterprise in American Education series is designed to pivot away from the tendency to reflexively demonize or celebrate for-profits and instead understand what it takes for for-profits to promote quality and cost effectiveness at scale. In this seventh installment of the series, Alex Hernandez of the Charter School Growth Fund urges parents, educators, and policymakers to listen critically when arguments are levied against education companies merely on the basis of tax status. Hernandez instead reframes the debate as one between incumbent organizations such as teachers unions and school districts, and new entrants with the potential to disrupt the traditional structure of the American education system. (Contains 37 notes.)
Descriptors: Teacher Effectiveness, Higher Education, Charter Schools, Cost Effectiveness, Nontraditional Students, Educational Change, Elementary Secondary Education, Federal Government, Proprietary Schools, Public Policy, Educational Innovation, Resistance to Change, State Legislation, Educational Legislation, Educational Finance, Financial Support, Educational Quality, Educational Technology
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. 1150 Seventeenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 202-862-5800; Fax: 202-862-7177; Web site: http://www.aei.org
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education; Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A