CURMUDGUCATION: AEI And The Commodification Of Education

CURMUDGUCATION: AEI And The Commodification Of Education

AEI And The Commodification Of Education

The American Enterprise Institute comes from that part of the ed reform spectrum devoted to free market approaches. But a new report from AEI really pushes the boundaries of treating education as a commodity like a house or a piece of jewelry. Really.

The report is entitled "An Appraisal Market for K-12 Education" and it's authored by Lindsey Burke, the director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, who also pops up at The Heartland Institute,  and is part of the "team" at EdChoice (what used to be the Friedman Foundation), and Education Next, and Fox Business, and even ALEC, where we find her pushing education savings accounts (aka super-vouchers). She earned a BA in political science from Hollins University (2005) and a Master of Teaching from the University of Virginia in 2008, at which point she went to work for the Heritage Foundation. So you've good a pretty good idea where she's coming from.

The "paper" (honestly, it has just one "source" in the "endnotes," and dressed up with a snappy stock photo, it would easily pass for a "blog post") is part of a series the Frederick Hess is putting together  for "sketching a new conservative education agenda." Let me just cast a vote to say that Burke's notion should not be part of anybody's new education agenda.

Burke starts out with a problematic analogy-- "Think about the last time you bought or sold a pricey item. Chances are you had the item appraised by an independent appraisal firm to provide peace of mind to both buyer and seller." Her specific examples-- houses and jewelry and antiques and cars and boats.

Basically, any costly expense with a high potential for information asymmetry has an associated CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: AEI And The Commodification Of Education