Strategic flexibility, public schools and creeping privatization

It's not often that business books have tight relevance to political and cultural issues, but The Strategy Paradox by Michael Raynor has much to recommend it. Here is my interpretation of the essence of Raynor's argument:

Given that the future is fundamentally unknowable, how can we determine the proper course of action at any point in time? The answer lies in the concept of "strategic flexibility."

At any point in time, there are possible actions that, if chosen, will support almost any possible future that emerges. Those core actions are the relatively safe bets that should be chosen.

Beyond that, there are other actions that can be taken to preserve certain that could prove valuable under different scenarios. These options are calculated bets which one must be prepared to lose depending on how the future unfolds. One should rarely (if ever) bet the ranch on these kinds of options. A small investment to create and preserve the options is sufficient until such time as the future become clear.

Which brings us to the issue of public schools, an issue well-covered this weekend by Rob Schofield at NC Policy Watch.

Last week at a press event at the state Legislative Building, the Parents for Educational Freedom group touted another pro-"school choice" idea: tax credits for parents of kids with special needs. The idea here is that parents who choose to educate their special needs children in a private school or home school can receive a tax credit of up to $3,000 per semester. To qualify a student must be determined, based on an evaluation conducted by the appropriate public school system, to be a child with special needs who requires special instructional or therapeutic services outside of the regular classroom on at least at daily basis.

In keeping with what has been the pattern with charter schools, the event attracted supporters from across the political spectrum - both hard core privatization warriors and pro-public school progressives who vowed that the issue is not an attempt to undermine public schools by sneaking "the camel's nose under the tent," but rather a sincere and legitimate effort to help kids today who simply aren't being served.

Going forward

Whether the idea of providing tax credits to special needs parents will ever be seriously considered by North Carolina lawmakers is unclear. Though progressive proponents (and some disability rights advocates) make a sincere case regarding the need to do something on the topic, there are lots of reasons for skepticism.

(snip)

These questions lead one back, unavoidably, to the issue of creeping privatization. While the progressive proponents are clearly sincere, the same cannot be said of their allies of convenience on the anti-public school right. These groups and individuals are committed to a long-term siege against the public schools in which they intend to push the system to a tipping point - a place at which the traditional model of public education will no longer be sustainable and the private, "free market" approach will take its place

For those North Carolinians who believe that there's more to freedom and education what we consume, the hope is that lawmakers will proceed with the utmost caution.

Rob's even-handed treatment of this issue is much appreciated. My post this morning attempts to interpret the choices he discusses in the context of strategic flexibility. As I understand it, the core choices are straightforward.

Choice 1. Do nothing. This is not a viable option. Needs are going unmet and lives are being upended by a system that does not yet deliver the services required.

Choice 2. Accelerate privatization. By cannibalizing core services currently delivered through public education, this option effectively eradicates other options, and, ironically, leads to a diminished set of choices. Strategic flexibility would argue that eliminating potential options is a fundamentally flawed approach.

Choice 3. Innovate within the current educational system. This option holds the best promise for achieving desired outcomes without reducing flexibility in the future. That said, it is not an easy path to follow. The educational bureaucracy is slow to break the mold, and is also mired in burdensome regulation and politics.

In my view, the proper course for a leader interested in solving this problem without throwing the baby out with the bath water is the following:

1. Encourage a moratorium on building large schools.

2. Establish a "special forces" team inside DPI that has a broad mandate to innovate outside the constraints of current policy. You've heard of "schools within schools"? Well this is "DPI within DPI." Choose an inspirational director from outside the established administration.

3. Accelerate the development of a broad range of small public schools. These schools would look a lot like charter schools, but would be developed inside the current public instruction framework.

4. Maintain the current cap on charter schools until the performance evaluation model if more fully developed and the "winning formula" is more clear.

As Rob so carefully writes, free-market extremists may be joining forces with progressives for "school choice," but their motives are suspect. The privatizers want to steadily chip away at the core of public education, subscribing as they do to the Grover Norquist model of thought. In doing so, they seek to eliminate the option of a vibrant, effective public school system in favor of a market-based system where profit drives the agenda. That dangerous approach ignores the principle of strategic flexibility. We don't have to bet the farm on privatization. We simply need to allocate a few acres to cultivating a new kind of crop.