The educational elites would have us to believe that the primary motive for private sector participation in public education is profit-centered. They ignore the fact that a large majority of private companies are managed by and replete with workers who themselves are products of public schools, and understand fully the importance of ensuring high quality public education. The traditionalists also fail to acknowledge that entrepreneurs of all stripes want nothing more than to expand and translate their business successes in ways that fulfill their social responsibilities and enhance their social profiles. The desire to give back to local communities and help prepare our next generation of leaders and workers is not a motivation that is only felt by those who work in schools and in the education industry. People from all walks of life share this concern and provide community service to schools through their personal and professional resources and expertise. Educational elites are perhaps fearful of the private sector’s strength in management proficiency and their proven capacity to root out financial waste and isolate systemic inefficiencies. Education industry professionals seem intimidated by the business community’s track record for producing meaningful and quantifiable results. The prospect that private firms and practitioners will be successful at producing above average academic results for students and schools should indeed frighten the scores of educators who have failed to adequately respond to the public outcry for substantive reforms in K-12 education.

If businesses are able to earn profits doing the hard work of educating our youth in ways that reflect the realities of our more interdisciplinary and cross-cultural world, then I say more power to them. Further, if private companies do so by expending per-pupil expenditures equivalent to traditional school financial investment, then we have a strong indication that the challenges before our students can be resolved without throwing new and good money at obsolete programs and systems. The easy response for the past few decades has been to call for unprecedented sums of funding for teaching and learning initiatives; however, even as policymakers have responded in kind to some extent, we have not witnessed measurable shifts upward in students’ academic achievement. While certain aspects of public schooling certainly require large amounts of additional financial investment, e.g. school renovations, classroom reconfigurations, curriculum overhauls, and technology upgrades, some management and operational functions such as school transportation, office administration, and personnel costs can be delivered at significantly lower cost levels. Because they are proficient in managing limited resources and developing effective systems, private companies are well positioned to lead us on a path toward improved accountability and more efficient utilization of our education finances. To those who consistently claim that the business community’s only interest in education is to earn profits, I say take a look at the financial waste, i.e. hidden profits, that have plagued schools everywhere, long before private companies engaged in school reform. For decades, these hidden profits have funded the salaries of overpaid administrators, idle facilities, unused technology, etc., and no one complained. We should all be focused on getting the most bang for our education bucks, and not on misinterpreting the pure motives of private citizens and entities that care deeply about educating America’s schoolchildren.