Say you're a member of the local school board and you find out that only 7% of your district's 11th graders passed the state math test. What should you do? First answer: Insist on improvement by the school.
But it turns out the school's low performance has been going on for years; the school is mired in failure and there doesn't seem to be much prospect of improvement. What should you do?
Next answer: Hit the reset button and start anew. But hold on! Reset what? What has to be changed?
The answer depends on your view of what's causing the mass student failure. Blame poverty and immigration: The students don't care about learning and many start behind because they don't speak English. Blame state education regulators: Their curriculum and testing requirements overwhelm the school day and result in shallow learning. Blame the legislature and taxpayers: They are unwilling to put more money into public education.
But, of course, you don't have control over those factors. And besides, there are schools all over the country that produce much better performance working with low-income and minority students, with the same regulatory burdens, and no more funding. So what should you do?
Next answer: Hold your suppliers accountable. Fire them--the school administrators and teachers--and hire new ones who you have reason to believe can do the job.
This decision-logic is far from unusual. If, for instance, you were having a house built and the general contractor and work crews kept screwing up, you wouldn't offer to pay them more to improve their performance, you'd fire them and get someone more competent to finish the job. But the world of education has a logic of its own. You can follow it in the case of the Central Falls, Rhode Island, school district.
After the district got the dismal math test results, the superintendent looked for ways to improve the school's performance and started negotiations with the teachers union. But the talks broke down when the union said that if the district wanted to add 25 minutes to the school day, teachers would have to be paid more. In other words, what teachers were already being paid was disconnected from the student achievement results. So the superintendent, backed by the school board, fired all 93 teachers. Unheard of!
The drastic move is likely to be repeated in more and more school districts--as pressure rises to "fix" failing schools and to hold teachers accountable for at least some of their students' performance. Unfortunately, the only sure way to fix failing schools is to break them up and start new ones; their chronic failure gives rise to a "school culture"--the hearts, minds, and habits of teachers, administrators, students, and parents--that defeats improvement efforts. At the same time, while there may be many factors to blame for a school's failures, it's also true that the quality of teaching is widely regarded as the single most important factor in student success. If teachers want much of the credit for success, why shouldn't they take much of the blame for failure?
As accountability for performance creeps into the education system, the people who control whether schools live or die--local elected school boards and authorizers and boards of charter schools--will increasingly realize that the more options they have for suppliers who manage and staffing schools the better. Why limit yourself to a teachers union's offer or to a particular charter school operator when you can shop around for the best performing suppliers and the best deal? And if there is lots of competition among lots of good suppliers in the education "marketplace," then it will be easier to look a failing supplier in the eye and say, "You're fired." | 
