Ambition is a crime.

For those who would argue that the United States public school system provides fair and equal access to education, please think again.

In America, you purchase your education when you purchase your house. If you want your kids to go to better schools, you move out of the city and into a better school district or pay for a private education. In a few cases,  there may be a charter-school or test school option. But otherwise, you are stuck. This system drives healthy families out of cities, and pigeon-holes the children of the poor into poverty.

For parents who want better for their children, they can apply to bussing  programs and participate in lotteries for charter schools. But these options are limited. Not every child gets into a better school. When some ambitious parents who wanted better opportunities for their children falsified their address so that their child could attend a better school, they were arrested. When these parents were caught, instead of rewarding their ambition, states arrested them and the school districts pressed charges for "education theft." To make matters worse, some school districts are spending tax dollars to spy on children that they suspect do not live in the district in order to kick them out of their schools.

For the whole story, see the Wall-Street-Journal  Post : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903285704576557610352019804.html?mod=opinion_newsreel .


America is a nation that loves choices, and claims to provide the tools to climb the socioeconomic ladder, but as long as parents need to "buy" their way into better schools, we will never achieve equality.

The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves by James Tooley

The Beautiful Tree is a great book for anyone interested in effective models of education in international development. The main thesis is that there are private schools for poor children in the slums of almost every developing country that are out performing their government sponsored competitors. Throughout the book, Tooley meets with development experts and influential politicians who all share one common belief: private schools are only for the wealthy. Tooley makes a great argument for why the private schools are often better: because if parents are unhappy with their children's education, they take their kids and their money elsewhere.

Tooley also exposes the inefficiency of the IMF, and argues that government-sponsored schools are a western model that doesn't even work perfectly in the west, and that this model is imperialistic. He backs his argument with historical records of private schools that existed well before the IMF was ever created. I think that he gets a little heavy handed with his argument that western school systems are imperialistic, but he also does an excellent job testing kids in both government and private schools and he shows that the kids in private schools learn better than their peers. He also provides lengthy data that the kids in  private school are mostly gender mixed and that their parents earn paltry sums, but value education. The private schools are very cheap.. most are less than $10 for a school year in the slums of Hyderabad, India.

Conclusion:
A good read, I would recommend it!