Doing It Themselves

Education in India is suppose to be free and universal up until the age of 14, but often it is not. For example, 10 year old Dhiraj Sharma could not go to school last year because the local state denied him admission because he did not have the acceptable papers and this problem is fairly common. He has now applied to a private school for $6 per month. The RS school has a much better education system than the state. Dhiraj’s father says that his son finished 3rd in his class and that the boy could not even read. These problems have became even bigger in private schooling throughout the world.
James Tooley, who is an adminsitrator for Orient Global, a company that invests in education for the poor, went to Hyderabad, India and found private schools on every corner. Tooley started a study in India, China and Africa and officials told him that there was no such thing as a school for the poor. His researchers found not only schools for the poor, but that they were also flourishing. This was perhaps the most dramatic in China. Tooley and his chief researcher, Qiang Liu, traveled to the poorest and most remote villages in the Gansu province. Officials told them that there were no private schools. Qiang went to the local market the next morning and talked to women who traveled from neighboring countrysides. These women told him that there were indeed private schools up in the mountains. Tooley’s survey found 586 of them, where the government said that there were zero. Everywhere else, the private schools were easier to find and were more numerous. In Delhi, there were hand-painted signs advertising low-cost private schools. In Hyderabad, 60% of schools that help the poor neighborhoods, were private. This is black market, because none of them are getting state aid and about 2/3 of them are not even recognized by the government.
Parents believe these schools do better jobs of teaching, despite the low cost and the parents are generally right. Teachers in India received lower salaries, but they worked harder and harder working teachers get better results, even if they do niot have the qualifications. In 2002, Michael Kremer of Harvard, did a study on Colombia’s PACES program and found that after 3 years after switching to a private school that students accomplished more, repeated fewer grades, scored higher on tests and were less likely to drop out, than the government system. Similar results were found in Thailand, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic , and the Phillipines. It is amazing how such poor schools can do more with less.


www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226757/site/newsweek/