“We have to do something radical,” he added.
So Liberia is handing over some public schools to Bridge International Academies, a private company backed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, to see if it can do better.
So far, it seems it can — much better. An interim study just completedshows Bridge schools easily outperforming government-run schools in Liberia, and a randomized trial is expected to confirm that finding. It would be odd if schools with teachers and books didn’t outperform schools without them.
.. The idea of turning over public schools to a for-profit company sparks outrage in some quarters. There’s particular hostility to Bridge, because it runs hundreds of schools, both public and private, in poor countries (its private schools in other countries charge families about $7 a month).
.. “Bridge’s for-profit educational model is robbing students of a good education,” Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, America’s largest teachers union, declared last fall.
.. I understand critics’ fears (and share some about for-profit schools in the U.S.). They see handing schools over to Bridge as dismantling the public education system — one of the best ideas in human history — for private profit.
.. Americans wonder why 60 million elementary school-age children worldwide don’t go to school. It’s no wonder if you have to pay under-the-table school fees and know that years of “education” will get your children nothing.