Mayor Bloomberg laying off teachers

Mayor Bloomberg is just one of many politicians and school boards that are laying off teachers across the country.

In today’s government-controlled education system, the primary tool for controlling costs is the layoff. If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail.

If elementary and high school education was chiefly performed by the private sector (even if it was funded via a voucher system paid for by government) we would have a much bigger variety of responses to financial difficulties. If we had thousands of different schools each with slightly different business models and all competing for students, we would have adaption in thousands of different ways that did not always come down to layoffs (although that would sure be one arrow in the quiver). This experimentation and adaption would lead to a better product.
One school might simply meet with the teachers and get broad agreement for a 10% across-the-board pay cut. Another school might ask the teachers to take on 10% more students. Another might ask each teacher to teach 10% more hours for the same pay.

But more importantly we would also see some fundamental experimentation that we rarely see in the public sector. One school might rely seriously on computer-assisted learning for more of the curriculum. Another might use master teachers to lecture (yes there still might be some of this) to thousands of students at a time via video links. Another might use non-credentialed seniors (that could provide grandmotherly encouragement) to the kind of love and attention that pays off in learning.

Some schools might limit their curriculum and leave important subjects like music, dance, and physical exercise to other institutions rather trying to bundle them into their school experience.

But our current union-led education system has one huge problem: It is poor at adapting. In a Darwinian world where schools and teaching methods that were not keeping pace would close, the problem would solve itself over time. That is why we need to turn back elementary and high school education to a competitive private sector. Our children would learn more and learn it faster. And even though government would still be footing the bill, the taxpayer would also save.