The lawyers at the United States Department of Justice are giving each other high fives because they convinced a judge, if not many observers, that the Microsoft company is a monopoly that quashes competition. The case reveals a curious double standard because some undeniable monopolies, harmful to the public, are not targeted with anti-trust action but instead get special protection. Microsoft may be a big software company, but it's about the stature of Mini-Me when compared with the government education monopoly, a true colossus with a voracious appetite. It's a government utility with guaranteed funding and captive clients. It controls 90 percent of the market but that's not the only indication of its clear monopoly status.
True monopolies resist innovation and that is the hallmark of the education establishment.
Promoters of merit pay, higher standards, longer school years, charter schools, and other reforms quickly find themselves assailed by shrill reactionaries dedicated to the status quo. That is why, as author Richard Mitchell has noted, even the best attempts at reform get co-opted by a system offering bad products at high prices. Without competition, the system has virtually no incentive to reform. Its failures have fueled a growing movement for educational choice that would provide competition. But the education monopoly establishment, from the federal Department of Education through the teacher cartels, marshals its considerable power to block such liberation.