A Lack of Competition Breeds Mediocrity and Waste

When protected from competition, even talented and well-intentioned public officials are motivated to act in ways intended to increase their income, authority, prestige, or leisure. The usual bureaucratic approach is to minimize choices for people for whom services are to be provided and to routinize procedures as much as possible, usually in the name of fairness and efficiency but often simply to reduce the bureaucrats’ workload. The result in public education has been large and impersonal schools, assignment of students to schools based on where their parents live rather than the special needs of students, and school codes and collective bargaining agreements that stifle creativity and mandate mediocrity.

The absence of competition and choice in public schooling has allowed school administrators to be dominated by teacher unions representing the employees they are supposed to be managing. Union leaders influence political decisions affecting school budgets and restrict access to information needed to implement regulations. The interests of union leaders are often different from and therefore compete with those of the students.