The moment one lends any credence to a "market-based" model of education, then it's feudalism, here we come. There is already a sort of caste system based on which communities can ante up the property taxes to get their schools the necessary supplies, and this will become worse under the "Race to the top" program. One of the smartest things that Louis XI, the "Spider King" did, was to launch programs to bring literacy to the peasantry. This horrified other kingdoms who saw it as an assault on the cherished precept of the feudal system that there should be a helpless and utterly disenfranchised laboring class. Compare the Confederate States of America, where it was a capital crime to teach a slave to read. They were clever enough to know that if you taught a slave to read, he might become Frederick Douglass.
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