A Convo on Monopolies and Public Education

Insofar as I tweet on education reform, I am far less evenhanded primarily because  a) Twitter is not a forum for which I have any moderating responsibility, and b) Many of the best known proponents of corporate Ed Reform, such as Mayor Mike Bloomberg,  Jonathan Alter,  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Governor Christie, Governor Snyder, Governor Walker and various itinerant billionaires, are engaged in a well-funded, well-orchestrated IO to demonize public education, teachers and their unions. Intellectual honesty has not been a hallmark of their political campaign against public education or of the self-dealing nature of their reforms,  or of  their results.

When I get a more substantive critique of public education or ed reform, like Dan’s post, I treat that with greater seriousness than pronunciamentos from oligarchic charlatans. Let’s dig into TDAXP!:

I think the general principle behind this comment is that any organization in a monopoly position is unconcerned with quality. This viewpoint is generally held, and wrong.

Actually, I had not thought that far down the road as modulating quality levels because a monopoly has not yet been established. Pearson, in alliance with the Gates Foundation, the National Governor’s Conference, many smaller Ed Reform players and the Obama administration, is *aspiring* to monopoly status in the ed publishing industry by becoming the official “go-to” publisher for school districts with material and standardized tests that meet the Common Core Standards.

[ The Gates Foundation, BTW,  is in this for the long haul, they started down this road with Acheive, Inc. in the mid 1990’s. This has been a far more strategic campaign in terms of planning than, say, US foreign policy in Afpak. Maybe we should put Bill Gates on the NSC or JCS]

The current state of the ed publishing industry after years of corporate mergers, is  technically one of oligopoly. How likely is Pearson to succeed in this gambit of acquiring monopoly status?  They are in different stages with the fifty states, but my advice is: buy lots of Pearson stock. There will be other publishers meeting niche needs (special ed, ELL etc.), or specific ed standards set by quirky, ideological, states like Texas and California, but Pearson will be the 800 lb gorilla. Regular publishers have no interest in entering the complex (in terms of non-market barriers to entry) textbook business and psychometric testing is even further afield for them.

Pearson is well placed to acquire the monopoly advantages discussed at TDAXP.

Dan’s post becomes very interesting here:

The third point is the most important here. All firms can fail by lack of understanding — that is, thru the economic system — whether they are monopolies or not. Both GM (a monopoly) and Wang Laboratories (not a monopoly) saw their position decline because of terrible product and marketing decisions. While monopolies have a greater buffer and farther to fall (because of their economies of scale and economic profits), sustained stupidity can still do the monopoly in.

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