(2006-05-10) Strong No Education Silicon Valley

Michael Strong believes we can't have Silicon Valley-like Innovation in Schooling as long as we have an overspecific Standardized Test-driven Monoculture. Opportunities for innovation in education are constrained by the dominance of the government school educational standard. The matrix of Curriculum, Text-Book-s, standardized testing, and teacher training and certification form a standard, analogous to a computer Operating System standard, which is essentially designed to the specifications dictated by government-run schools... Educational innovation, as with technological innovation, will not produce the spectacular gains resulting from decades of freedom unless tens of thousands of educators have the freedom and potential for financial support to tinker with incremental steps, some of which may seem impractical and experimental for decades. The extraordinary benefits ultimately resulting from a free market in education have nothing to do with better test scores in the next five years. The real benefits will be realized by releasing what Hayek calls “the creative powers of a free civilization”over the course of the ensuing decades to allow radical innovation to occur in education.