(bright music)
(pensive music) (airplane whirring)
In the modern world, we ride the crest of a wave.
Every day, innovators discover new and better ways
of meeting our needs.
The greatest innovations are routinely replicated worldwide,
except in education, which has remained stubbornly at anchor
while the rest of the world has sailed past it.
That modern world is growing
at an unprecedented pace.
India now has more children than any other nation on Earth,
and so, education has become a priority.
Here, even though public schools are free,
many poor Indian parents pay to send their children
to private schools.
Their reason is clear.
I spoke to one father who transferred his daughter
from the private to public, and now, back to private.
He told me, "If you go to a market
"and are offered free fruit and veg, they'll be rotten.
"If you want fresh fruit and veg, you have to pay for them."
And in Sweden, a handful of schools
are breaking the mold and turning modern trends upside-down
in pursuit of educational success.
Well, when you're looking at how many students
want to get access to our school,
it tells me that we're doing something right.
And in New Orleans,
local educators think they are doing something right
by investing time and resources
into the charter school movement in the Big Easy.
Join us as Andrew Coulson explores the challenge
of replicating educational excellence in School, Inc.
(upbeat music)
Major funding for this program
has been provided by
Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Foundation,
Prometheus Foundation.
Additional funding was provided by
Gleason Family Foundation,
The Steve & Lana Hardy Foundation.
Here in Chile, 30 years after the passage
of a national school voucher system,
students out-perform those in all other
Latin American countries,
and private schools remain a vital part of the system.
But what appears to have worked in Chile
may not work elsewhere.
There is one other place where we can see it working.
Sweden!
10 years after Chile reformed its education system,
Sweden followed suit.
All private schools are now fully tax-funded,
and parents can easily choose between these
so-called free schools and the local public schools.
Before the program began in 1992,
private schools enrolled barely 1% of students.
Today, that's up to 16%, and still rising,
but are Swedish test scores going up as fast as Chile's?
Actually, they're falling.
Swedish math scores dropped like a rock from 1995 to 2003,
and continued to fall, though more slowly, after that.
Here's the thing, back in 2003,
public schools still enrolled 96% of students,
so it's the public schools that dragged down
the national average.
So the only way that Sweden's school choice program
could be responsible for the country's academic collapse
is if competition from the few new private schools
sent public schools into a tailspin.
But according to the latest research, the opposite is true.
The more private sector competition Swedish schools face,
the better they perform.
Okay, then, what has been hurting public school achievement?
It's a tough question, but here's one possible cause.
The share of college students
applying to teacher training programs
has plummeted over the past quarter century,
and their academic ability has fallen with it.
Back in the 1980s, there were 10 applicants
for every open space in Swedish teacher's colleges.
By 2012, there were so few applicants
that nearly all of them were accepted.
College admission in Sweden depends in part
on a multiple choice scholastic aptitude test.
Guess every answer and you'll score about 20 out of 100.
The average score for students in colleges of education
was just 25 out of 100,
which means many of them scored worse
than if they'd circled answers at random.
But why have so many high achievers given up on teaching?
It might have something to do with a dramatic change
in the culture of Swedish schools.
Reforms introduced in the 1980s and '90s
de-emphasized academics,
and shifted control from teachers to students.
Today, nearly half of all students in Stockholm
report that their studies are regularly interrupted
by their peers, who routinely ignore the teacher
and chat on cellphones and social media during class.
Both the public and private sectors have been affected
by this cultural shift,
but at least some of the private schools
are bucking the trend.
A network called IES, or International English Schools,
emphasizes academics in a calm, respectful atmosphere.
Students must behave courteously,
address teachers as Mister or Miss,
and follow a conventional dress code,
all of which is illegal,
but the principal seemed disinclined to knuckle under.
Our schools believe in discipline in the classroom.
Our schools believe in high expectations for the children.
I say to our principals, we stand up for who we are.
We tell the parents this is what we expect.
We talk to the students also,
this is what we expect from you.
This is, after all, a workplace,
and after all, you have a choice.
If you don't like our rules, there are places
where you don't have to abide by rules.
Founded in 1993, IES now operates 24 schools,
serving nearly 18,000 students,
with an additional 30,000 still on its waiting list.
When you're looking at how many students
want to get access to our school,
it tells me that we're doing something right,
that we have the right people in place.
Given that success, I asked Barbara Bergstrom
if she thought the government should require other schools
to emulate IES's methods.
I don't think so because I believe it's the choice
that people are having, that's important.
What we do is of great interest
to a segment of the population.
It's not, you know, one size fits all.
I think the issue of choice is the most significant one.
And Swedish parents have a lot of choices.
Another of the country's popular chains, Kunskapsskolan,
takes an entirely different educational approach.
So, we organize our subjects into steps and themes,
and all the steps and themes
are found on the learning portal,
and the learning portal is accessible to students,
teachers, and parents.
You can use it on any device, from an iPad or a smartphone,
or from home, anywhere you are,
so you can study French on the bus if you want to.
Kunskapsskolan's individualized model
gives students considerable autonomy,
but it doesn't leave them unsupervised.
As a teacher, I have three roles in Kunskapsskolan.
I'm a subject teacher, I'm a general teacher,
I'm there for all the students,
and also, I'm a personal coach,
and I meet every student for 50 minutes a week.
I think that our flexible way of organizing time
and our space gives me more room
to create the different kinds of sessions
that I think my students need.
Like IES, Kunskapsskolan is expanding,
even internationally.
We have, in Sweden, about 40 schools,
and about 10,000 students.
We started in London, three years ago,
and in London, we are now running five schools.
We are growing at the pace where we can keep quality.
IES and Kunskapsskolan could hardly be
more different pedagogically,
but both are well-liked by the families they serve,
and academically successful.
And if neither model appeals,
there are hundreds of other independent schools
to choose from.
But here, again, not every good school grows.
This is Individual High School.
It scores well academically,
its students regularly win awards,
and it has a very illustrious list of alumni,
a list crowned by Her Royal Highness,
Crown Princess Victoria.
But like a typical American prep school,
it has never grown beyond a single location,
and the fact that it's now part
of Sweden's school choice program hasn't changed that.
Why do some grade schools add new locations
in response to rising demand while others don't?
Is there even a pattern?
Well, I've got good news and bad news.
The good news is that there is a pattern,
and it's incredibly simple.
Yay!
There's a single feature that separates
independent schools that scale up from those that don't.
The bad news is that that feature is the profit motive.
(students groaning)
Here's the thing, lots of people don't like the idea
of for-profit education,
and if it isn't widely accepted, it won't be widely adopted,
and great educational options will remain out of reach
of millions of kids.
While popular non-profit schools grow slowly, if at all,
their for-profit competitors form networks,
like IES and Kunskapsskolan.
But there's still another possibility.
Maybe the correlation between for-profit status and growth
is just a coincidence.
Monthly ice cream consumption goes up and down
with the murder rate, but there's no reason to think
that frozen treats actually make people stabby.
Is there any reason to think that the profit motive
actually causes schools to grow?
Or, looked at the other way, does non-profit status
discourage growth?
The answer is risk.
If new locations fail, they can drag the entire enterprise
down with them.
Donors to non-profits are unwilling to assume that risk.
They give to sustain a tradition, not to jeopardize it.
I believe that all entrepreneurs that succeed,
they are being driven by the goal to change something.
Profit is a receipt to show that you've done it
in a successful way, but its primary aim is not, hey,
let's make lots of money.
The primary, make sure to do something that people like.
And if they don't like it, well, make money.
That's an important consideration
that sometimes is forgotten.
It really does seem as if the profit motive
plays an essential role, but that's just half the story.
Entrepreneurs only earn a profit
if they make good decisions.
If they make bad ones, they suffer losses.
To understand just how important
that carrot and stick system is,
it helps to look at a case in which the stick was missing.
This is the Vasa.
Launched in 1628, it is the oldest surviving ship
in the world.
Gustav Adolf II, the Swedish king who commissioned it,
spared no expense.
It ended up costing almost 5%
of the entire Swedish national income.
Construction lasted over two years,
and just a few months before the Vasa's launch,
it was subjected to a routine stability test.
30 crew men lined up on one side of the deck,
and then they ran back and forth across it in unison.
But after just three iterations,
the admiral overseeing the test called it off
because it seemed the Vasa was about to capsize.
Naturally, the ship was redesigned and retested
before being put into service.
Didn't happen.
Actually, the Vasa was launched as-is,
and on its maiden voyage, it sailed 1,200 meters
into Stockholm harbor, keeled over, and sank,
killing about 50 of its crew.
That crew, of course, did not include the admiral.
He made his bad call from the safety of the shoreline.
Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, go down with the ship,
and that puts a limit on the amount of risk
they're willing to take.
It also limits the amount of damage they can do
if they're completely clueless.
Companies that consistently make bad decisions
continually suffer losses until they run out of money
and credit and fail.
And when decision makers don't pay for their mistakes,
they have less incentive to make well-informed decisions.
That's what led to the disastrous launch of the Vasa.
The shipwright only had experience
working with a single gun deck.
The king decided he needed two.
His Majesty also called for more and heavier cannons,
and masses of elaborate oak carvings,
all of which made the ship less stable
by raising its center of gravity,
which raises an important question.
Was it really wise of the king to substitute his preferences
for the judgment of the shipwright?
We might well ask the Swedish government
the same question today with regard to schools.
They aren't telling educators they need more cannons
or oak carvings, yet,
but they are telling them how, and even if,
they can do their jobs.
For example, the government forbids teachers
from grading their students' work
until they've reached middle school.
It has also begun requiring all private schools
to hire the graduates of its official
teacher training programs,
even though everyone admits that these programs
are attracting the country's weakest college students.
The government even prevents new private schools
from opening in places where it thinks
they would attract too many students,
out-competing the local public schools.
In these and other ways, the Swedish government imposes
its own decisions on schools
without having nearly as much at stake in the outcomes
as the educators who actually run them.
Like King Gustav Adolf and his admiral,
the government officials are making their calls
from the safety of the shoreline.
Standing next to Sweden's most famous preventable disaster,
it's hard not to think that history
is about to repeat itself.
(melancholic orchestral music)
If there were no regulations at all,
wouldn't some private schools
try to take advantage of families?
And wouldn't the most likely victims
be children whose parents had little schooling themselves?
If so, we'd be most likely to see it
in a place where private schools
are serving a relatively disadvantaged population.
I know just where to look.
(pensive music)
Here in India, a lot of schools are taking advantage
of poor families.
Back in 1999, a team of researchers made surprise visits
to schools around the country.
In village after village, they found one type of school
that consistently had the worst facilities
and the least learning.
Most had leaky roofs and barely any had drinking water.
And if you're wondering why anyone
would pay for that kind of service,
it turns out there's a good reason, they have to.
The findings I just described are for public schools.
I met this lady recently at a social gathering
and I said that, oh, so what's been going on with you?
And she said, "Oh, I managed to get a government job.
"My life is set."
And I said, "Well, set in what ways?"
She said, "Well, I'm never gonna be fired.
"This is a job for life and it pays me well,
"and I don't even have to go!"
And I said, "How does that work, you don't even have to go?"
She's managed to find somebody a bit influential
in the department of education, locally,
and the guy has asked somebody to fill in her attendance
every single day, so she hasn't been to school
for last year and a half, since she was posted there.
That's not to say that all public schools
in India are dysfunctional.
There's one network run by the federal government
that's very highly regarded, but spaces are limited
and three-quarters of them are reserved for the children
of government officials.
But what happens to poor children
who can't get into an elite public school
or afford an elite private one?
That's a question that British education professor,
James Tooley, found himself asking
when he came to Hyderabad on a research trip.
So, one day, I took a auto rickshaw
from my hotel in Banjara Hills, the nice part of town,
down to the Charminar, where I'd read in my rough guide
to India, the slums of the old city
lay behind this Arc de Triomphe, if you like, of Hyderabad,
and I found something which changed my life.
It was one of those wonderful moments
where I found a private school, a low-cost private school,
in those days charging the equivalent
of about one U.S. dollar per month.
I found one, and then a second, then a third,
and soon, I found this federation
of low-cost private schools.
When Tooley revealed his discovery
to other education experts and government officials,
they were a tad skeptical.
They said, "Calm down, Tooley.
"Calm down.
"What you found," and I remember this,
"What you found is a couple of businessmen
"ripping off the poor.
"And anyway, it's only happening in Hyderabad in India.
"We know about it, it's a small thing, you know."
And I thought, ripping off the poor?
But that's not what I've seen there.
I've seen dedicated entrepreneurs who are running schools.
They come in on their weekends
and run science fairs, sports competitions.
When you see, you know, one or two schools in poor areas,
you think, okay, this must be charity.
Maybe the mosques are supporting them,
some NGO, some non-government organization
is supporting them.
When you see five, 10, 15,
and you hear of 500 of these schools,
you realize that can't be the case.
There has to be a financially sustainable business model.
I talked to a lot of parents.
I said, "You're poor, you know.
"Why are you spending money on the private schools
"when the government schools are free?"
I'll never forget one said, "In the government schools,
"our children are abandoned."
And sure enough, I went to see
one of these government schools,
and I'll never forget this.
130 children sitting on the floor,
it's a government school just around the corner from here.
130 children, all bright-eyed, eager to learn,
eager to welcome this stranger in their midst,
doing nothing, abandoned.
Dozens of scientific studies have now looked
at these budget private schools in India and elsewhere,
and what most of them find is that private schools
are out-performing government schools
that spend three or four times as much per pupil.
But higher quality isn't their only appeal.
Another huge factor is the language of instruction.
India has hundreds of native languages,
and the public schools in each state
usually teach in the dominant local language.
Private schools, on the other hand,
almost always teach in English,
because that's what parents want.
And it isn't hard to see why.
English not only facilitates communication between states,
it's also the international language of business,
and international business
has taken a keen interest in Hyderabad.
During the 1990s, barriers to foreign investment
lowered, and high-tech companies flooded into the city.
The explosion in high-tech employment
has generated new service and professional jobs
in which English is also an asset.
When I first came to Hyderabad,
I was quite naive about these things,
and I spoke to one of the first school proprietors,
one of the first entrepreneurs I met,
and he told me that the government inspectors,
the education inspectors,
come three, four, five times a year.
I thought, well, that shows a degree of commitment
on behalf of the government to educational standards.
But I soon found out that they came, really,
to take the bribe.
They were quite upfront about it.
They came, they sat in the office,
they sat in a comfortable desk, they took the money.
They didn't even bother to look in the school.
They had a nice cup of hot chai
and off they went.
The reason that government school inspectors
are able to extort bribes is that these low-cost schools
cannot afford to comply with the regulations.
For example, the law demands that each school
have a large playground,
but in the dense slums of Hyderabad,
spaces like that are hard to come by.
Land prices are atrocious!
How can a small entrepreneur afford something
like a 16,000-square-foot sports playground?
I think there's a lot more important basic thing
that we need to get on with, rather than playing sports.
They can always go home and do other things,
but they need to learn the basic literacy first.
I think what's more important is what goes on
in a classroom, what happens with the instruction.
What about the learning outcome?
The regulations in India are much more onerous
to private schools than they are
in other parts of the world.
This inhibits investment,
this inhibits entrepreneurs creating opportunities.
This inhibits the growth of the sector.
One of the first entrepreneurs, again, I spoke to here,
he said, "Sometimes, government is the obstacle
"of the people," and I understood exactly what he meant
when I saw the regulations that were impeding
on the private schools here.
But if regulation doesn't explain
the greater efficiency of low-cost
private schools, what does?
We've had some wonderful parent meetings
in the schools here.
These parents care about their schooling.
They said, "Why are there only 10 computers?
"Why was a teacher absent last week?
"Why is the playground not finished?"
They care, they're paying money, they feel it's good money.
It might seem very little to you and me.
It's good money to them, they want the best,
and because they're paying,
they will keep the schools accountable.
That's a very important thing which you mess with
at your peril.
And I spoke to one father who had transferred his daughter
from the private to public, and now back to private.
He told me, "If you go to a market
"and are offered free fruit and veg, they'll be rotten.
"If you want fresh fruit and veg, you have to pay for it."
I'll never forget that.
That was his experience of free public education.
He thought paying was better.
He thought the accountability kept the schools on their toes
in a way that couldn't possibly happen
in the public schools.
At fee-charging private schools,
parents expect more because they're paying more,
so they hold school leaders accountable.
And school leaders, in turn, hold their teachers accountable
because they'll go out of business if they don't.
By contrast, public schools here almost never fire teachers
for poor performance or absenteeism.
Enrollment in fee-charging private schools
is growing at 10% a year, and if that continues,
they'll soon enroll the majority of students nationwide.
In cities like Hyderabad, they already do.
It's great that these schools perform better
at a fraction of the per-pupil cost of state-funded schools,
but there's still a lot of room for improvement among them,
and wide variations in quality from one to the next.
So are the good ones scaling up?
Muhammad Anwar, he's typical.
He's got a heart, he provides scholarships
named after his father
for a percentage of the children in his schools.
There's no reason why philanthropists, well-meaning people,
can't do that sort of targeted assistance
to help the poorest of the poor come to schools like this,
and really help them get an education.
In an effort to expand access
to education among India's poor and lower castes,
the government passed the Right to Education Act,
or RTE, in 2010.
Under the new law, the government requires private schools
to reserve one-quarter of their places
for disadvantaged students,
and pays those students' tuition.
At the same time, the law demands all private schools
meet extensive infrastructure
and teacher certification requirements.
But as we've seen, low-cost private schools
cannot afford to meet these requirements,
which would force them to quadruple their tuition fees,
according to one estimate.
Since that would put them out of reach
of the poor families they serve, it's just not an option.
The result in many states, the government has begun
to shut down thousands of low-cost private schools.
But quality control isn't the only justification
for regulating schools.
Some people worry that if educators are free
to teach whatever they want,
and parents are free to choose among them,
that it might Balkanize communities into warring factions,
but is that true?
Does diversity have to mean discord?
To find out, we need to head back to a town
where cultures have been colliding for hundreds of years.
("When the Saints Go Marching In")
When people think of New Orleans,
they often think of Mardi Gras,
a celebration inherited from the French,
who ruled Louisiana during most of the 18th century.
The French got the idea from Roman Catholics,
who, in turn, got it from Roman pagans.
Among the most popular paraders are the Mardi Gras Indians,
comprised of African-Americans
who wear costumes inspired by Native Americans.
Music, of course, is a big part of Mardi Gras,
especially jazz, which was born in New Orleans
from African roots, European instruments,
and a dash of Spanish influence.
You can still see some nice Spanish architectural touches
in the city's French Quarter.
All of that to say if you're looking
for a cultural melting pot,
New Orleans is a pretty good place to be.
Now, let's say you add to this melting pot
a dollop of school choice,
a program that lets families choose
from among a host of public and private schools
that teach different values and religions.
Would all heck break loose?
That question came up in 2002,
when the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide
the fate of just such a program in Ohio.
Vouchers worth $2,500 were offered to low-income families
who could redeem them at public and private schools,
including religious ones.
That freedom of choice gave pause to Justice Stephen Bryer,
who feared that it would create conflict
in a diverse society like ours, and tear our nation apart.
Two other justices shared Bryer's reservations,
but the majority decided to uphold the voucher program.
It wasn't that they necessarily disagreed with him,
they just thought his concern had no bearing
on the constitutionality of the program.
So the question remains.
Were Bryer and the other dissenters right?
Does giving families a wide range
of educational choices cause conflict?
New Orleans is a good place to answer that question
because a voucher program was introduced here in 2008,
and expanded statewide four years later.
As expected, most of the schools were religious.
What wasn't expected is that one of them
turned out to be Muslim.
For some legislators, that was a deal breaker,
and they were pretty candid about it.
One said that she liked the idea of providing parents
with a choice between public schools and Christian schools,
but that she did not support public funding
for the teaching of Islam.
Another said that he opposed any bill
that would provide funding for Islamic teaching,
saying, "I won't go home to my people
"and explain I voted for this."
Within a few days, the objectors got their way.
The school withdrew its application,
not wanting to be the center of a heated debate,
and its withdrawal caused the controversy to subside,
at least temporarily.
As a result, the statewide expansion
of the voucher program was enacted, and as it happens,
the participation of non-Christian schools
is not the only source of controversy
under voucher programs.
Another bone of contention is the teaching of science,
especially biology.
The dominant theory among biologists
is that life on Earth evolved through a process
of genetic mutation, natural selection, and random chance,
and that theory has itself evolved over time
as generations of scientists have updated
Charles Darwin's ideas, producing what is now known
as the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis.
That's how science works.
Someone comes up with a theory
that makes testable predictions.
Others try to falsify it, either wholly or in part.
Theories that fall short are discarded or revised
in order to better reflect reality.
Science is a process
for successively approximating the truth.
Theories that survive gradually gain wide acceptance
among experts, and the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis
is one of those survivors.
But while science doesn't promise absolute truth,
religion often does.
For instance, most Evangelical Protestants
see the Bible as literally true.
This means that they believe humans and other animals
did not evolve over a millennia,
but rather, were divinely created in their present form.
This creationist view is commonly taught
in Evangelical schools, and many of them participate
in Louisiana's voucher program.
If you're a parent looking for that sort of instruction,
it's a congenial arrangement,
but not everyone is enthusiastic.
I grew up in Louisiana, where we have a law
called the Louisiana Science Education Act.
This law allows the critiques of evolution
to be taught with supplemental materials
that have no oversight.
And the purpose of this, I mean,
say this is to promote critical thinking,
which sounds great, but the problem is they also say
critical thinking is teaching creationism.
I think everyone should have a good science education,
but if you choose to send your kid to a private school
without public funding, they can learn creation,
if you want, but anywhere where there's public funding,
we should teach reality.
That is a common refrain among critics
of creationist voucher schools.
The public shouldn't have to pay
for that religious instruction.
It's hard not to admit
that Justice Bryer was on to something.
The participation of religious schools in voucher programs
has led to tension and conflict,
but what Bryer seems not to have recognized
is that these very same battles
have long been raging in our public schools.
Some have only been minor skirmishes,
but other cases have been, well, cases.
One example is the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial of 2005.
Parents in Dover, Pennsylvania
sued their public school district
to stop it from teaching creationism in biology class.
Those parents eventually won,
but battles over public school biology instruction
are still erupting around the country.
Well, in perfect time.
(jazzy piano music)
Given how much we fight over our schools,
with or without choice programs,
it might seem as though there's nothing we can do about it,
and yet, diversity doesn't always cause discord.
There's one field that's been bringing together
people of different races, cultures,
and religions for generations,
and producing harmony instead of acrimony.
That field is music, and in particular, jazz.
In the 1930s, it was illegal, in many states,
for black and white musicians to share a stage,
and segregation was the norm,
even where it wasn't enforced by law.
But the musicians themselves ultimately overturned
America's artistic apartheid.
A decade before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier
in professional sports,
pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton
joined the Benny Goodman Quartet,
playing to packed houses around the country.
Miles Davis later did the same thing
by hiring the white pianist, Bill Evans,
to join his famous sextet, not to make a point,
just because he liked the way Evans played.
If music can create all those culture-bridging triumphs,
why not schools?
Could there be a way for us to promote parental choice
and educational diversity
without creating endless conflicts?
To find out, it may help to go back in time
to the place where those conflicts began.
(bright music)
St. Augustine Church in Old Town, Philadelphia.
It's a beautiful building, but on a human scale,
which is probably why it's played host
to everything from society weddings to feature films,
but the appearance of St. Augustine
has changed quite a bit over time.
169 years ago, it looked like this,
and a few months later, like this.
The original St. Augustine's Church
was burned to the ground
during the Philadelphia Bible Riots of 1844.
By the time the smoke cleared, 25 people were dead,
and another 100 injured.
If the idea of Bible riots sounds odd,
the reason for them will sound even odder.
Reading the Bible was mandatory in public schools,
but each Christian sect had their own version
of the good book.
Protestants had the King James version,
which was required reading,
but Catholics were only supposed to use their Douay version,
with its annotations and interpretations.
Philadelphia's Catholic bishop
tried to diffuse the situation
by suggesting that either Catholics be exempt
from the mandatory readings,
or that they be allowed to use their own Douay Bible,
and some Protestant ministers began suggesting
that the bishop wanted to remove the Bible
from public schools entirely.
Unruly protests followed.
Those protests became mobs, and mobs became riots.
(people yelling)
It was America's bloodiest conflagration
over religion in public schools,
but the same tensions could be found all across New England.
In Maine, Bridget Donahoe was expelled
from her public school for refusing to read
from the King James Bible,
and her priest was stripped, tarred, and feathered
for putting such ideas in his parishioners' heads.
And in Boston, an 11-year-old boy named Tom Wall
was caned for a solid half an hour
for refusing to read from it.
Just as in Louisiana, publicly-funded religious schooling
created social tension and conflict,
but there is a difference.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld vouchers
because they leave the choice between secular
and religious schooling up to parents.
But in 19th century Pennsylvania
and Maine and Massachusetts,
there was only one government school system,
and it was Protestant.
That sounds an awful lot like the sort of establishment
of religion prohibited by the First Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution.
Why didn't those Catholic families
sue their school districts?
Well, they did, they just lost.
Fortunately for us, Old Town, Philadelphia
is a good place to find out why.
This is Carpenters' Hall.
It's played a lot of different roles over the years,
from bank to banquet hall.
It was even the home to Benjamin Franklin's
library company, and in 1774,
it was the site for the First Continental Congress.
When the Second Continental Congress met two years later,
they formally declared that independence,
and a dozen years after that,
the Constitution of the United States was ratified.
But though a majority of delegates
supported the new constitution, a third voted against it.
One of the most common complaints
was that it lacked explicit protections
for individual rights.
The critics got their way a few years later, however,
when the first 10 amendments,
what we now know as the Bill of Rights,
were adopted by the states.
There are only three things that Thomas Jefferson
wanted mentioned on his tombstone,
that he founded the University of Virginia,
and that he was the author
of both the Declaration of Independence
and Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom.
That statute declared that no one
could be compelled to frequent or support
any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.
In the preamble
to his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,
Jefferson wrote that:
[Thomas Jefferson Actor] To compel a man to furnish
contributions of money for the propagation of opinions
which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.
What if that is the underlying cause
of America's endless school wars?
Not the diversity of our ideas,
but the compulsion to pay for those we disagree with.
Yet, that's precisely what's been happening
for the past 150 years.
Everyone has been compelled to pay
for a single official system of education.
So, naturally, everyone has wanted it
to reflect their own views and reject those they oppose.
But in a society with so many contradictory views,
that's been impossible.
The only way for one group to win
has been for another to lose,
hence our endless battles over what is taught
in public schools.
In the last years of the 18th century,
Catholics in Philadelphia were still very poor,
so when two Augustinian friars came to the city
to build a church, they had to cast a wide net
in order to raise the necessary funds.
One of their main donors was the sitting president
of the United States, George Washington, a Protestant.
Washington's gift caused no public outcry.
In fact, St. Augustine returned Washington's
ecumenical favor when it became a hospital
for stricken Protestants
during the cholera epidemic of 1832.
Wouldn't it be great if we could harness
that same spirit of philanthropy in education?
One way to find out is to visit a place
where it's already happened.
(train horn tooting)
(bright music)
This is the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway,
about an hour north of Philadelphia.
Back in George Washington's time,
it was just starting to be explored by coal miners,
and a community was founded here in 1818 called Mauch Chunk,
meaning mountain where the bears are.
Some things have changed over the years.
The town is now known as Jim Thorpe,
but for the most part, people here are happy to keep
that 19th century flavor.
Here in the woods of Central Pennsylvania,
there is one 21st century innovation
that has taken root, which the locals seem to like.
When it was brought to our attention
that this tax credit was enacted,
I thought it was too good to be true.
And most of the money's an expense
that we would incur anyway, in the form of taxes,
so it's always nice to be able to direct your dollars
where you'd like to direct them.
It's called the Education Improvement Tax Credit.
Businesses can donate money to any of a number
of charitable scholarship organizations.
Those organizations help low income families pay tuition
at schools the parents choose.
Pennsylvania's Scholarship Tax Credit Program
operates in small towns all across the state,
but most of the students it serves
are found in big cities, like Philadelphia.
I take donors into schools a lot,
and it's very unlikely that you leave any of these schools
without saying, "How can I help?"
We have had a really high 90% retention rate
with companies who've given to us.
We obviously have school fairs to help them choose,
but as long as the school is accredited by the state,
then the families are empowered to choose
what school works best for their kid,
and the scholarship follows them.
If they don't like the school,
they can go to another school.
The major limitation of the program
is that the state has capped the total value of donations
that are eligible for tax credits.
With the current situation,
even the school district is interested in partnering
on the QT with us because they are closing failing schools.
I always say we have no stake in this game
as an organization.
Our job is to just get scholarships,
give 'em to kids who don't have access to them.
And so, if they mechanically made it easier,
and they remove the cap,
I think the programs would explode in size.
I think you'd see 'em three or four times the size,
and what I think you'd see is the quality of education,
even in some of the non-public schools,
would even get better.
It sounds as though the program
would grow dramatically if the tax credit cap
were raised or removed.
In fact, we can already see that happening
in the state of Florida.
What's different about Florida's program
is that its cap is automatically raised every year,
so long as there are more families and more donors
who want to participate.
In just a few years, the program doubled in size
to nearly 70,000 students.
Subsidizing education through voluntary philanthropy
seems to offer a lot of freedom to parents and donors,
but what about teachers,
and how could we even measure the difference?
I don't know about you, but I could use a beer.
(lively orchestral music)
Maybe I should rephrase that.
The beer itself is not going to help us
answer this question, but a technique developed
by a master brewer actually will.
Enter William Sealy Gosset, a young chemist
at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland.
Gosset's job was to improve the beer
without having to raise the price.
That meant doing experiments to identify things
like the best ingredients.
But those experiments took time, and they cost money,
so Gosset had to figure out ways of extracting
useful conclusions from just a few small scale studies.
The company was so keen on his efforts
that it gave him a year-long sabbatical
to research statistics in London.
Their decision paid off.
Gosset developed a technique for drawing conclusions
from very small studies, making statistics a useful
and affordable way for Guinness to improve its products.
For instance, presented with two shipments of hops,
Gosset could tell if one was better than the other
by testing just a few samples,
and he knew how confident he could be in his results.
The company was so impressed by Gosset's breakthrough
that they didn't really want other breweries
to learn about it.
Nevertheless, they let him publish his work anonymously.
Gosset chose the alias Student,
so his technique became known as Student's T-Test,
and it's still used by scientists all over the world.
In fact, that's why we're interested in Gosset.
His test can help us answer our question
about regulatory differences between vouchers
and tax credits.
As this chart illustrates, the difference is substantial.
Joining a voucher program is expected to more than triple
the amount of red tape educators have to contend with.
That's a much bigger burden than the one expected
for participating in a tax credit program.
One reason for the difference might be
that tax credit programs, like the one in Pennsylvania,
rely on voluntary private funding.
No one is forced to donate
to a scholarship-granting organization,
and anyone who does can pick the organization
that receives their funds.
It's a system that is directly accountable
to both donors and parents, so there's little incentive
for piling on regulation.
Vouchers, on the other hand, are public dollars.
All tax payers have to pay for them, and yet,
they have no direct say over how those dollars are spent.
As a result, some legislators feel they must use
regulations to control how vouchers are used.
Unfortunately, as we saw in India, Chile, and Sweden,
those regulations are not always helpful.
In most countries, we not only make it cumbersome
to operate an individual school,
we make it hard for innovators to scale up successful ones,
much harder than it is to replicate excellence
in other fields.
That's kind of a big deal.
How big?
(warm energetic music)
And that's why we've come here,
to the outskirts of Manchester, England,
because this is where the wave began in the late 1700s.
This was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,
and it's where the American, Francis Cabot Lowell,
learned how to build a water-powered textile mill
from the people who first developed them.
And yet, the most dramatic thing
about the Industrial Revolution is not the machinery,
but the transformation it caused in the standard of living.
For the first 200,000 years
of human history and pre-history,
the average person survived on $3 a day, or less.
In 1798, a Brit named Thomas Malthus
famously described this problem,
and claimed that the population would always rise faster
than the supply of food and other resources,
so the standard of living could never rise.
Ironically, Malthus was absolutely right
about the way the world worked
right up until his own generation.
In the two centuries since,
the world's population skyrocketed.
According to Malthus, that should have led
to global starvation.
Instead, the standard of living rose even faster
than the population.
In the countries that caught the wave early,
average income shot upwards by a factor of more than 30,
from $3 a day to 100.
That is the real wave, a tide of innovation so colossal
that it swept away the Malthusian population barrier.
After 200 millennia of stagnation,
sustained progress in human welfare
finally became the norm, and it all began here
in the United Kingdom, in the mid-18th century.
So what was Britain's secret ingredient?
There's no shortage of theories.
Was it a higher savings rate, international trade,
exploited workers, colonialism, greed,
modern science, the Protestant work ethic,
railroads, canals, and on and on?
There have been dozens of possible explanations offered
since people started to notice the wave.
Until shortly before the Industrial Revolution,
earning a living was scorned by the elites
of every society on Earth.
If you worked with your hands, you were beneath the notice
of dignified people, and if you ran a business,
you were beneath their contempt.
The widespread loathing of entrepreneurship
has to have made opening a business less appealing.
If all that hostility prevented the rise of the great wave,
it's terrible news for education.
After all, running a business that earns money
educating kids is still widely despised today.
Consider the case of Reed Hastings,
the founder and CEO of Netflix.
After college, Hastings joined the Peace Corps
and went to Swaziland to teach high school students.
In the 1990s, while he was hatching the idea for Netflix,
Hastings also took graduate courses in education
because he wanted to understand why schools were lagging
while other fields were leaping ahead.
Sound familiar?
Since then, Hastings has given millions
to educational charities,
but has decided not to start an education business.
He told a reporter he didn't want people to think
he was doing it for the money.
So education can have some of Hasting's charity,
but it can't have his entrepreneurial leadership.
But outside of education, that attitude started to change
around the year 1600.
A new way of talking about commerce appeared
alongside the old one.
Shakespeare himself was a transitional figure.
In addition to casting characters
who fit the old negative mold,
he introduced a few who shattered it.
His Comedy of Errors, for instance,
is full of business people who are basically nice.
They're polite, they honor their contracts,
and they don't try to cut chunks out of each other.
In the years that followed, favorable references to commerce
appeared in English plays, essays, and novels.
Many of them are now forgotten, but others, not so much.
If this little bungalow looks familiar,
it might be because it was featured
in the television adaptation
of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
As with most of Jane Austen's books,
it is filled with pompous gentry
who sneer at anyone who works for a living.
But in Austen, those are the bad guys.
For instance, the conniving Bingley sisters
mock our heroine, Lizzy Bennet,
for having an uncle who's a merchant.
But though he works in Cheapside,
they're not criticizing him for being poor.
Cheapside is an actual street in London,
and in Austen's day, it was an upscale shopping district.
The Bingley sisters mock Lizzy's uncle
because he earned his money in trade,
instead of getting it the right way, from a dead relative.
That opportunity for entrepreneurs to earn people's respect,
says economist Dierdre McCloskey,
is what caused the great wave of innovation
that raised the standard of living worldwide
by a factor of 10,
a factor of 30 in the nations that adopted it early.
She doesn't argue that mundane economic factors,
like financial incentives, competition,
and consumer choice were unimportant,
just that they were insufficient.
But is she right?
It's too soon to say with confidence,
but one thing we can say is that her theory meshes well
with the story of education.
Then, as now, education was, perhaps,
the only field in which successful entrepreneurship
was not celebrated, and so, did not flourish.
Where it has begun to thrive in modern times,
it is only in exceptional places,
where resistance to education as a business has lessened.
But even if McCloskey does turn out to be wrong,
we're still left with a choice in how we think about
people who work for a living,
whether it's digging ditches, running a shop,
or building a school network,
a choice between, say,
Jane Austen's snobbish Bingley sisters
or her open-minded Lizzy Bennet.
Who do we want to be?
(warm music)
What if we allowed all education entrepreneurs
to put their own money on the line
in an effort to better serve us,
gaining or losing based on their successes and failures,
just as entrepreneurs do in other fields?
And what if we made sure that everyone had access
to that wide open marketplace?
Would we then see excellence scale up in education?
(warm music)
Andrew Coulson's exploration
began in a one-room schoolhouse in 18th century New England,
and has taken us on a journey across the globe,
seeking answers to the question
why can't education use innovation to grow
like a successful business?
We have met inspirational teachers in unlikely places,
and have seen a unique approach to learning in South Korea,
where students put a personal premium on competition.
And we've seen how new educational ideas
have lit the flame of learning in places like Chile,
Sweden, and India.
But the question remains, what will it take
for educational excellence to ride the wave of innovation
that improves the outcome for everyone?
(bright upbeat music)
(energetic music)
Major funding for this program
has been provided by
Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Foundation,
Prometheus Foundation.
Additional funding was provided by
Gleason Family Foundation,
The Steve & Lana Hardy Foundation.
(bright music)