Education is now-market driven. Competition for student enrollment is creating a unique period in public education. With this competitive market, public schools no longer have a captured audience. Parent are realizing their power to choose what type of school environment they want for their children. They have the ability to customize their children's educational needs by selecting: charter, home or public education. School districts holding to the ideology that "the way things have been is the way they will be" are heading for enormous financial problems as their student population decreases.

What causes this shift? Basically parent have lost trust in the public system. They feel that they have no voice in their children's education. Public schools have been the link of implementing social changes in our society. Many of these changes were good and needed, but the price to pay was the declining amount of time to educate. Reports and statistics reveal that a great number of students are graduating without basic skills in reading, math, and writing. Discipline is minimum and one student often disrupts the learning environment of others. Parents fear for their children safety. Their input for change has not been ignored and the states requirements upheld; so when they lobbied for breaking up the public school conglomerate and won, they felt empowered to make a choice. This is part of what caused the shift from the time-honored neighborhood schools to alternative education.

What can be done? Welcome the competition as a way to create effective schools and provide a more productive learning environment for the student and community. Evaluate curriculum and offer options to the student who needs enrichment and assist the students who need intervention. Also, educational facilities opened to the community, and a school system that invites the community to share the building and facilities that the taxpayers built beyond the 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. schedule. School-community programs for adults, ESOL, dropouts and programs that beyond the September to May schedule.

Changing the current educational paradigm is difficult. Districts that cannot change, though, will be forced to layoff and cut programs. Public Relations, communications, and repositioning their district for this new partnership with the community will be an approach that will help them survive in the competitions of market-driven education.

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Updated on Thursday, September 30, 1999