Bumps in the road for private educators

A recent death at an Atlanta-area "psychoeducational" center illustrates one of the primary roadblocks to successful private educational facilities. Atlanta contracts with private entities like Alpine to run schools for students with mental illness and behavioral disorders - a decision that a Georgia DoE official says allows students to be "educated in their communities" on top of being a money saver.

Both of these - quality and efficiency - are among the right reasons to use private organizations in public education management. They go out the window, however, when a student dies ostensibly due to poor practice and poor staff training.

Special education, and special education centers most of all, are the logical and ideal place for private-sector education firms, for- and non-profit both, to break into the market, but for the free-market to be successful in education, these companies must self-regulate, they must follow good practice (in this case, at the very least, adopting widely-accepted safety guidelines such as those at nationalguidelines.org), and they must provide transparency equal to or greater than that offered by public schools, or they may never be competitive.