Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools (Hoover Institution Press Publication)
For parents, teachers, policymakers, taxpayers, and scholars who want better schools for children regardless of their race, social background, and parents’ income, this book  asserts that, if schools were "privatized," or moved from the public to the private sector, they could once again do a superior job providing kindergarten-to-twelfth grade (K–12) education. Such a change will take place, say authors Herbert Walberg and Joseph Bast, only when majorities of voters and opinion leaders are convinced that markets can be trusted to perform the task better than government. Creating a sound basis for that trust is the purpose of this volume.Drawing on insights and findings from history, psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, the authors reveal what history tells us about the government’s role in schooling—and why keeping most schooling in the hands of government does not help achieve equality and democracy. They examine the main reasons why schools and past efforts at school reform have failed and show why capitalism can indeed be trusted to produce safe and effective schools. Walberg and Bast explain the basic institutions of capitalism and put to rest many of the misconceptions about how capitalism operates, defending its morality along with its compatibility with religious and humane beliefs. The authors also include specific design guidelines for voucher programs that protect the poorest and most vulnerable members of society and otherwise work as well as their proponents predict. Education and Capitalism clearly shows that, without a broader understanding of how and why markets work, the small steps in the right direction taken at the end of the twentieth century risk being swept away at the start of the twenty-first. Herbert J. Walberg is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a member of its Koret K–12 Task Force. Joseph L. Bast is president of the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Chicago, Illinois.