WINSTON BRADY: The need for competition in the education marketplace

EDITOR'S NOTE: Winston Brady is the Director of Curriculum at Thales Academy and Thales Press in Raleigh, N.C. He has served at Thales Academy for over a decade in various teaching and administrative roles and directs an in-house publishing firm for Thales Academy, writing textbooks and designing courses for students at Thales Academy and like-minded classical schools across the country.

A recent Capitol Broadcasting Company editorial made a few claims concerning public education that, being a Thales teacher, I believe misrepresents proponents of school choice initiatives. The article asserts that Michele Morrow, who is running for state Superintendent of Public Instruction, is unqualified for the position because of her background as a home-school mom, political statements and her belief that many public schools have become “indoctrination centers,” quoting the editorial.

To support their case, the editorial quotes one of Ms. Morrow’s supporters, Robert Luddy, a philanthropist and entrepreneur who founded a network of private schools called Thales Academy (where I work). The article quotes Robert, hereafter Bob, Luddy’s book The Thales Way to suggest Ms. Morrow’s lack of support for the current state of public schools suggests she is unfit to be Superintendent of Public Instruction:

It is virtually impossible to change the K-12 status quo in public schools. The highly entrenched educational bureaucracy prevents any type of positive change. Sometimes 'Exit,' a disruptive organizational approach that involves exiting the current system and creating a new one, is the best solution instead of trying to reform the current model.

Out of context, the quote misidentifies the goal of such a “disruptive organizational approach,” an idea made famous by the late Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School. The idea of “exit” or “disruptive innovation” argues that some industries become so entrenched with powerful players, or their position is so well-protected by government privileges, that they have practically no competition. Without competition and no new entrants into the marketplace, those firms slowly but surely raise their prices and offer inferior products to their consumers. While not perfect, an often-cited example is that of taxi cabs and Uber drivers, wherein Uber’s app and location-sharing technology disrupted an industry no longer working for customers. What followed was much cheaper fares for Uber customers and a much better experience for those that exited one industry—taxis—in favor of another.

In a similar manner, one way to encourage public schools to return to their mission of educating students is to foster competition in the field of education. Competition incentivizes all schools, not just public or private, to better serve the needs of students and parents and not take them for granted. Such competition creates better value for customers (who are the students and parents) and would do so in the realm of education as well. The covid-19 pandemic and the shift to online, at-home learning brought many parents in contact with what their children were actually learning — and parents were not happy. It became apparent that without competition in the educational marketplace, those schools had lost sight of their mission and soon lost the trust parents had given them to educate their children.

We should not lose sight of the overall goal in teaching and educating. To speak for teachers and teaching-parents working outside of traditional public schools, the goal of education is to fill the hearts and minds of students with good things. Such good things include but are not limited to math fluency, content-rich history and literature, and stories of noble character to inspire students to develop their talents to the best of their ability. In and alongside such a goal, we want to build up a system of education that is crucial to the well-being of society not only in North Carolina but also across the country.

Indeed, if North Carolina public schools were delivering high-quality education for students, then parents would not be voting with their feet and looking for alternative schools for their kids. It is unfair to deride their opponents as irresponsible reformers looking to tear down, rather than build up, the state of public education. According to a January 26 poll in the Carolina Journal, 31% of respondents said they were happy with the state of public education. The share of the electorate not satisfied with the current state of public education in North Carolina is a large section of the market looking for better alternatives for their children. Instead of deriding school choice proponents like Ms. Morrow, we should encourage the formation of new schools to better serve their needs.

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