Ray, please. It's not "my original" market approach we're talking about; it's both the law of the land and an inevitability of human society, that market forces play a role in education as they do in so many other walks of life. They never have been absent from the field of education and they cannot be made to go away from it.

Markets don't, in themselves, maintain inequalities. Segregationists who argue people of different classes should never live side by side, because that can only harm the lower classes -- they do maintain inequalities, don't they? I don't share their views.

We have fundamentally different interests in this discussion. I am interested in the real challenges and choices facing urban education, because I have a kid in the system and that makes me think about the subject more than I otherwise might. You are looking for occasions to complain about Penn and capitalism, as usual (two obviously allied, but somewhat distinct, critters). Outcomes don't matter to you; only judgements matter. Always the same judgement, too.

I'll leave you to your pet judgement. I'll continue to comment on the real challenges and choices. Urban education in Philadelphia is at a crossroads. Wherever it is headed next, one thing's for sure: it's not going back to that "egalitarian" quagmire of guaranteed low expectations for every child, especially when he's a child of color.

-- Tony West


I never said we needed a one-size fits all solution. I said maybe it's time to start looking at public schools not as vegetable stands, but as places that prepare us for life -- inside and outside the marketplace. I hope now you realize that your original market approach to an 'egalitarian' public school system relies upon maintained inequalities, by definition, and that your pointing to a school that relied on tailor-made market tactics wasn't helpful.


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