What Is the Right Level of Regulation in Public Education?
Back in September the Show-Me Institute released my paper, “Decentralization Through Centralization,” in which I examined the development of the nation’s first all-charter school district in New Orleans. Though a mouthful, the title was my way of highlighting the tension that exists in the decentralized New Orleans system, which has been created with greater centralized control. In the paper, my co-authors and I highlight several potential pitfalls that might occur because of the power vested in a centralized entity. This week, Reason released a video highlighting another potential pitfall of the New Orleans Recovery School District model—regulatory creep.
As Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, notes in the video:
People like autonomy in the abstract, but they get real nervous about it. If any one of a hundred or a thousand schools does something goofy, there’s always a natural temptation to say, “Well, we’re for autonomy, but let’s have a rule that doesn’t let you do X.”
Over time, Hess suggests that these regulations mount. If not checked, the decentralized charter market could become a bureaucratic morass. So what is the right level of regulation? And is it possible for a decentralized school system to resist what Neerav Kingsland, former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, calls “death by a thousand regulatory cuts”?
If you have seven minutes, you should check out the video.
