In England, the Industrial Revolution generated a demand for a new kind of education. People needed to be literate, and they needed to know more than the classics. The endowed grammar schools were slow to respond to that demand, primarily because teachers preferred their yellowed notes and schoolmasters felt no need to offer what might sell. In the United States, tuition-charging schools and charity schools educated the bulk of students until well into the nineteenth century. In addition to reminding us that history shows that children get the best education when the parents pay for it and the worst education when the state provides it, Coulson explains why current schemes to improve public education will inevitably fail.
Charter schools are even less likely to produce significant improvement.
The principal additional flaw is the government's obsession with test scores. Once renewal of the contract is made to depend on improvement in test scores, the contractor will teach to the tests. In one instance that Coulson cites, the private contractor taught math and English almost exclusively because the district tied the contractor's fees to student gains in those two subjects. This instance is the only one in which Coulson lets ideology trump common sense. The market may be the best solution to most problems, but it is not necessarily the only or even the best solution to every problem.