“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.
Want to Get Rid of Trump? Only Fox News Can Do It
For many conservatives, they support Mr. Trump because he’s their de facto leader in a cultural war. Liberals mock Christianity and demean Christian morals. Conservatives respect our police and military, while liberals romanticize street thugs. Conservatives’ tax dollars help pay for public schools and colleges that indoctrinate liberal values. Out here some conservatives aren’t even calling them “public” schools anymore. They call them “government schools,” as in, “We don’t want to pay for your damn ‘government schools.’ ” They’re afraid to send their kids to them.
.. A sergeant major in the Iowa National Guard recently overheard a pro-Trump law enforcement friend and me disagreeing about Mr. Trump. He shook his head and smiled, telling me, “Well, all I know, Bob, is that my unit’s budget just doubled.”
.. my conservative friends should ask themselves, what has President Trump accomplished that a President Mike Pence couldn’t have, without all of the drama? And what matters more: President Trump or their conservative values?
.. Mr. Hannity and other Fox hosts could provide cover for congressional Republicans to consider impeachment.
.. Right now, Mr. Hannity might have more power over an impeachment process than Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell.
.. Even if the investigation turns up clear evidence of presidential misconduct, I believe it would be impossible for the party to consider impeachment without Fox’s support.
.. Yet if Fox turns, it’s inevitable. For reasons I do not understand, that network has that kind of power among most of the conservative rural voters I know.