Some interesting educational statistics:

In Chili, about 60% of school age children attend private schools.  In 2010, the percentage was less, but even then, the competition raised the performance of both private and public systems.

Here’s another study showing the benefits of comprehensive school choice in a foreign country. Interestingly, the author of the report about the Chilean system clearly is not a fan of competition, yet even his data shows higher scores for private schools and rising overall scores, even in the government schools – which is exactly what one would expect since competition encourages every type of school to do a better job:

Chile’s education system was decentralized in 1980, and a voucher-type subsidy was introduced to encourage private providers to enter the market. …Following the reform…, the subsidized private sector rapidly expanded…with 56 percent of enrollments in the municipal sector and 34 percent in subsidized private schools. The fee-paying private sector has expanded…to account for 10 percent of total enrollment. …test results have tended to improve over time, especially at 4th grade, but there are significant differences…fee-paying private schools on average score 19 more points than municipal schools in the SIMCE test, whereas subsidized private schools score 4.5 more.

In Sweden, in 2009,  a program of educational competition had already resulted in almost 20% of students enrolled in private schools, and again the performance of both systems rose due to competition.

The Mayor of Stockholm gave some brief remarks at the closing dinner of the Mont Pelerin Society meeting and mentioned that the number of students in private schools had skyrocketed after the implementation of Sweden’s school choice program. Intrigued, I emailed the folks at one of the nation’s research organizationsto ask for some details.

The figures are impressive. The number of students attending private high schools has jumped from 1.7 percent in 1992 to 19.5 percent in 2008. Not surprisingly, the quality of education is high. Indeed, researchers have looked at the data and concluded that, “Our findings support the hypothesis that school results in public schools improve due to competition.”

The evidence seems to show clearly that competition drives improvement in student scores in both private and public educational systems.  Why not implement such a program here, to the benefit of all?

No doubt the unions would fight this tooth and nail, using their control of the Democrats to stop any such plan.  Remember, it's for the children.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, California, the descent into madness continues.  The school board there has decided that if one racial group is being disciplined more than others, it must be racism, and therefore discipline must only be dished out proportionally consistent with the percentage of that race in the district.

The Oakland school board on Thursday night unanimously approved an agreement with the Office for Civil Rights to reduce the number of out-of-school suspensions of its African-American students. …

Chris Chatmon, director of the district’s African American Male Achievement initiative … said that while African-American students made up 32 percent of [Oakland Unified School District]'s enrollment during the last school year, they received 63 percent of all suspensions.

I guess that after the racial discipline quota is reached for African Americans, probably in May or June, then they are scot free for the rest of the year.  And the people who decided on this plan are adults?

If you have your kids in an Oakland school, and they aren't African American, would you leave them in knowing that sometime in the spring the district would cease any effort to make this demographic behave in class?  Private schools would be mandatory for my kids were they in that environment.

Insanity defined.