If they are not but people think they are true, there is a political case for privatization that will lead to bad policy and lousy outcomes.
In education, my view is you can't measure what matters and when you gauge rewards on measurement of what doesn't matter you get lousy education. One alternative to measurement is closer management (not necessarily in a hierarchy, could be with some kind of self-management involving parents) of teachers, another, not mutually exclusive, is high professional standards (better pay for teachers, better school infrastructure).
Most important, though, is not locating all the problems inside the school to begin with. (n.b. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/books_class_and_schools/ )
> Max,
>
> I'm still not following. I understand that corporations strive for
> efficiencies to maximize profit. However, if we do things more efficiently
> in a public organization, it allows us to more prudently use public
> resources to contribute to the public good. I don't see the problem here as
> "efficiency"; the problem here is dismantling public organizations and
> privatizing them. Making public organizations more efficient does not help
> accomplish that right-wing political goal. In fact, if we make public
> organizations more effective and efficient, we demonstrate the benefits of
> production for the public good, and we can undermine political efforts of
> those who want to privatize our public organizations.
>
> What am I missing here? Shouldn't quasi-socialist public organizations like
> community colleges effectively and efficiently use resources?
>
> Miles
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