See Part I

Monopoly is a Description, Not a Value Judgment

Your editor feels obliged to point out that while others may imply or infer that monopoly as applied to public schooling is an epithet, it is meant here as a description.

Monopolies are not evil in and of themselves. Before it became possible to distinguish multiple phone or electric utility providers use of the same lines, allowing a single provider to monopolize service in one geographic area was the only alternative to no service at all. Still, there is little doubt that consumers are offered fewer choices and charged higher prices under monopolies than competitive markets.

Government monopolies are not unusual or all bad. Some activities required by the collective citizenry have been considered too dangerous to leave to a marketplace, too complex for private firms to undertake, or too important to delegate. Until the outsourcing of convoy security in Iraq, the right to engage in armed conflict overseas was a state monopoly. Police powers remain exclusively in government hands. Until a few decades ago, mail services were a government operation in every Western country. Until recently, the legal right to undertake space travel was government's alone.

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reserves public education to the states, although the federal government is within its rights to condition education funding on compliance with federal education law. Until Minnesota passed its charter school law in 1991, public education was a state or local monopoly depending on the state constitution. Over 3000 of these schools now exist across the United States, and charters educate a significant share of students in districts like Dayton, Ohio and Washington, D.C., but most of public education is operated by government.

Public education became a government monopoly as states and localities assumed responsibility for educating all children beginning in the 1850's because most parents lacked the resources required for private schooling. (Learn more.)The idea of opening up public education to market forces did not enter the public debate until economist Milton Friedman proposed the idea in1955.  Getting past the obvious political and economic interests of districts and unions in maintaining a favorable status quo, philosophical resistance to vouchers stems largely from the idea that the government monopoly of allows society to pass on common values that hold the country together.

Industry Structure Before No Child Left Behind

Historically, the federal role in education has been limited, centered on support for disadvantaged children and very much tied up in the conflict between federal support for minorities’ civil rights and states' rights under the 10th Amendment. Today's Department of Education was carved out of the Department of Health Education and Welfare in 1997, in no small part as fulfilment of President Carter's campaign obligations to the National Education Association which favored a more active ffderal role in public education. (Download one history below.) It is ironic that a department Republicans campaigned to abolish because of its encroachment on state’s rights, would acquire its greatest power over the states through a No Child Left Behind Act championed by a former Republican governor and discussed later.

The federal role in enforcing civil rights – principally monitoring of school system desegregation plans consented to, or ordered by the courts, and in the accounting of funds provided to assist poor children or those with disabilities under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act - was directive and focused on compliance. But the federal government did not interfere with the states in decisions about the teaching and learning that goes on in the classroom.

As noted earlier, whether such decisions were within the control of state or local government depended on state constitutions and traditions. As a practical matter (aside from along and continuing debate over evolution) until relatively recently when technological advances offered digital alternatives, the primary decision related to teaching and learning has been the purchase of textbooks. In America’s newer western and southern states, power was held by the state government, and reflected in the decision to develop procedures to adopt lists of approved textbooks for every grade and subject. In the nation’s older states, localities preceded their capitals and reserved more power to themselves. Here districts controlled these decisions.

After two centuries of textbook publishing for American public schools, a handful of multinational publishers hold X percent of the market. By the turn of this century they were trading marginal market shares back and forth in different segments. Their sales and profits correlate more with the size of student populations than overall changes in budgets, and have served as a cash cow fueling their parents’ global growth and shareholders dividends.

Finally, although schools and districts were becoming accountable for student performance from the 1980's on, little effort was made to assess the value-added to the teaching and learning process by textbooks. In short, until No Child Left Behind, educators' decisions about textbook purchases used brand as a proxy for quality.  The product of extensive sales channels and huge marketing budgets, this fact gave the big publishers oligarchy a virtually unassailable market position.

Next: Part III - the role of consultants