Research on school and program effects now demonstrates overlap with the HRO literature. This suggests a systemic path toward progress. An important policy-relevant conclusion concerns fiscal support for public schooling. HROs cost more than traditional industrial plants. They cost more because they are operating under different demands.
Efficiency assumes a certain level of fault tolerance.
The greater the tolerance for occasional failures, the greater the possible efficiencies. HROs are designed to achieve trials without errors. If the rhetoric of the National Education Goals is to be taken seriously, then the supporters of that rhetoric need to understand that higher reliability is, in the middle term, more expensive. It will help if our political leaders remember that in the long run it would have cost less to have operated the Three Mile Island nuclear facility reliably than it is costing to clean it. It will cost less to provide highly reliable schools for students at risk than to pay for continued expansion of welfare, police, and prison programs.