Competition and choice in space sharing
Monday, November 17, 2008Written by: Alexander Ooms
Several of the recent articles on the DPS school-sharing proposal feature school representatives voicing their fear over increased “competition.” In doing so they further blur a complex line between competition and choice, which finds that choice (and the resulting specialization) often helps both alternatives.
Competition is generally based in three areas: price, product and service. In business, the companies that offer basic (commodity) products have to compete primarily on price (think gas stations). The companies that offer non-commodities compete on some combination of different products or services. One of the main differences is that demand for most commodity products does not increase with more choice (you don’t buy more gas because there are two stations, although you might if this competition means that gas is cheaper). In contrast, demand for even basic products often increases if the product or service is reasonably different.
The common example of the latter is Starbucks, which took a relatively staid coffee industry, offered new products (skinny caramel soy latte anyone?) and better service (the environment is carefully controlled to be relaxing - while sitting in your comfy armchair, notice the absence of any clocks), and overall coffee sales increased tremendously. Instead of a new Starbucks resulting in the demise of all other coffee shops in proximity, it turns out that it often helps.
Strange as it sounds, the best way to boost sales at your independently owned coffeehouse may just be to have Starbucks move in next-door.
The Starbucks example is one of many; there is an entire school of research and theory around the organic tendency of like-minded businesses to “cluster,” and the benefits that this clustering brings. Fear not competition between good products.
Public education is not a commodity product, but defenders of the status quo often act like it is, and assume that a new school will mean the demise of the existing school (and please limit the comments accusing me of saying education is coffee). This is only true if you think public education is a commodity like gas. If you give schools the autonomy and ability to better focus their programs, there is no reason to think you won’t attract more students overall.
The DPS proposal, intelligently done, offers local students and families careful choices that may help multiple schools, and often placed programs together that may actually complement each other. Thus, West High School will share with a Edison, a middle school which, if successful, could easily increase the number of kids at West. Kunsmiller Arts Academy, slated as a K-12, will share with West Denver Prep (where I serve on the Board), which will overlap in middle school years, but which offers a very different standards-based curriculum and program. Smiley, which offers a specific International Baccalaureate program will share with Envision, which features small schools with project-based learning. These schools are no more offering the same educational product than a steakhouse and sushi restaurant are both offering the same food, and it is logical to think that parents will be able to know which program is a better fit for their child.
Increasingly, the idea of a single neighborhood school that is the right fit for all children in its proximity is problematic. No one disputes that kids are different, so why do we force different kids to attend the same school? Some of the best schools and programs in DPS are those that specialize. Somewhat buried in this article on school grades in New York is the statistic that the eight specialized schools within the city all received the highest ranking. It is no coincidence that the two best high schools in DPS, which are located in very close proximity, both specialize: Denver School of the Arts and Denver School of Science and Technology. What choice (and competition) often do for non-commodity products is allow organizations to focus on what they can do well.
When school-sharing opponents argue against “competition”, they are saying that they prefer that students and families not have a local choice. While there is no doubt that it is easier to get kids to come to your school if they have no alternative, there is also no reason to think that a lack of alternatives make schools better, and some reasonable belief that choices help. But what these naysayers often miss is that increased and better school choices will help students choose some form of public education in one of its many evolving flavors.
And the truth is that competition for public schools already exists: private schools for the affluent or gifted; and dropping out altogether for many students who fall behind. This is the competition that more public school choice should be addressing - not the choice of a different public educational program in the same building.
November 18th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Mr Ooms is on parade!
Strike up the band
He’s on parade!
Looking for a new home
For his little charter school,
West Denver Prep,
He’ll play ‘is little charade!
Doggerel, yes, but Mr Ooms, it sounds as if you already have a new home. But despite that, you felt the need to sell this idea again? After all, the bond brought you your $20 million for the creation of the radical, I mean, innovative, schools of the 21st century. And West Denver Predatory Academy got its new home at Kunsmiller in the dead of night didn’t it? (Will the Lilliputians really spend $1 million of their money on a 2-year home? …maybe only $500k? Oh well, all’s well that ends well, yes?) The rat’s head in your tea has not spoiled your appetite for the next grand 14-course meal at Bennet’s Chinese Restaurant, has it? So off you go to sell this next meal: collocation and the tendency for like businesses to cluster. What a fine idea, Mr Ooms! So fine a day. So fine an idea!
Of course, there is that little dark secret in the business world, isn’t there: you know the one where the same type of business as the previously failed one moves into its location? To be more clear, when one Chinese restaurant goes out of business at 900 Grant Street, should another move in, or is that just asking for another failure? It seems to me that “B” school says this strategy is a failing of the uninformed mind, or was that just an ancient Chinese secret? It is so hard to remember here in jolly old England circa 1708!
Your view of the complementary offering, or the diametrically opposed offering, or the slightly off-centered offering, …or harmonically obtuse offering, …or an offering based on the concept of strong attractors …well, you get the idea, don’t you Mr Ooms? The offering, no matter how it is designed, is unsavory, no matter how it is stir fried and plated for the unsuspecting patron.
There is always the other offering. It is the idea that offers simplicity and elegance: it is the offering of the great community-based school, a school without all the marketing frills and advertising hype. The offering not brought to you by our school district.
If it were not clear at last night’s meeting of the Dunderheads of Public Schools (DPS) Board of the Uneducated, most people simply want the offering of a good public school that their kids can walk to, get a good education at, play a few sports in, and then walk home from. …The type of school where kids and parents have time to have dinner together instead of driving across town while having Chinese takeout from Bennet’s Chinese Restaurant on their way home from their choice’d in charter school. They seem not to want the Caesar Salad Chavez Academy with a little KIPPer on the side, or the medium rare West Denver Predatory Plate with mashed Envision charter potatoes stuffed into their middle school. Oh, Mr Ooms, what could be wrong with this rabble, these philistines, the poor unmalleable fools who do not want Bennet’s ancient Chinese secret? Calgon, Take Me Away!
I acknowledge that this appears to not be true of Padres Unidos, a group paid for with Donnell Kay’s dinaros, to cry out for better, charter-filled tomorrows! Other than these high-minded citizens of the District, however, no one seems to want the product you’re selling. It seems to me that “B” school also says that the first rule of the market is, give the customer a product he wants to buy. If this were offered, then maybe DPS could work out the cluster that is its schools.
Yours Respectfully,
Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Mom, please stop writing these. You’re embarrassing me.
Pseudonym Bickerstaff’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Bickerstaff) farce prefers performance over debate, obturation over fact, is expert at naming others while remaining anonymous, and I can only hope has better dramatic outlets than just this blog. Me mum is British, and would do a much better impression of Swift.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Well, if we separate the rhetoric from the substance, we are left with a statement that is pretty hard to disagree with:
“(M)ost people simply want the offering of a good public school that their kids can walk to, get a good education at, play a few sports in, and then walk home from.”
That’s it, alright.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am
A little slow on the uptake here. I think it is interesting, despite the drama, that there are some interesting questions in Mr. Bickerstaff’s post, as Ms Hansen says. Fundamentally, is DPS offering its families the choices they want? I agree that we need to serve students at risk, but how do we serve the students who are not at risk?
In Central Denver, our families are typically well educated with household incomes well above the average. What choices are we creating for them? My friends in NW Denver are in the same boat: they have college educations and no real choice in their community. So we all drive across town to one secondary school or another. We have Morey close by in Central Denver but this school offers a stratification of students, tracking if you will, where the HGT children are separated from the High Strides children, who are separated from the average children. On the surface, this model seems to serve no one, as the children are robbed of the chance to interact with children of diverse capabilities, something they will have to do long after leaving Morey. Some of my friends send their kids to DCIS and DSA, a couple to Hamilton. None of these are neighborhood schools.
I see the success for schools like West Denver Prep, but I also see that this school serves less than 200 students. Even if 400 students were served, this model does not solve the problem for students from educated homes or students how are being academically successful in places like SW, NW, NE, or Central Denver. These students are the forgotten backbone of DPS, those performing well who simply need a secondary quality school to further their success. Can you respond to that Mr. Ooms? I believe that is the debate in which Mr. Bickerstaff wishes to engage.