Businesses fail to cater to the needs of their customers all the time and continue to post record profits at their customers expense. (Think Merck as an example.)
Businesses exist to maximize profits to their owners, not maximize benefit to their customers. If those two coincide, then excellent, however if the needs of their owners are different then the needs of their customers, then the needs of their owners will be met first.
There's nothing wrong with that. It's capitalism working as it should. Corporations exist for their shareholders.
*smiles*
I used food as an example because it was the first one that came to mind. (And it's important, the nature of the food that is served at school certainly impacts a child's health as well as their educational performance.)
However, a better example comes to mind; textbooks.
Would you rather that a school used the least expensive textbooks they could find or would you rather that they used the highest quality textbooks they could afford?
A for-profit educational model will likely be driven to use textbooks supplied by the lowest bidder, which may or may not be of high (or even acceptable) quality.
How do you propose to prevent that?
I should note that I'm not completely opposed to a system of mass private education, I just don't believe that such a system is possible without greatly impacting the already low quality of education found in American schools in a negative way.
Furthermore, my original question hasn't been addressed.
How do parents hold a for-profit corporation that has a monopoly on local education accountable?
I really don't know much about Merck, except that they develop and sell drugs. Ar you suggesting that the drugs they sell don't provide benefit to the people taking them? And drugs (and other medical businesses) are bad ones to analyze because of the corrosive effect of insurance, and especially government insurance.
Businesses exist to maximize profits to their owners, not maximize benefit to their customers.
You really have no clue. I charge by the hour, and so do others who do what I do. So some think they can pad their hours and make more money. Maybe they get away with it once or twice with some deep pockets client. I do my jobs in the shortest time I know how, and my customers give me all the work I can handle. I want them to make gobs of money on the jobs I am involved in. I care more about their bottom line than most/all of their employees and stockholders because the more money they make on me the more I can charge.
I used food as an example because it was the first one that came to mind. (And it's important, the nature of the food that is served at school certainly impacts a child's health as well as their educational performance.)
Public schools may have suffered their most noticeable decline when you lefties began to turn them into nutrition centers. Schools are for educating, period.
However, a better example comes to mind; textbooks.
Would you rather that a school used the least expensive textbooks they could find or would you rather that they used the highest quality textbooks they could afford?
Textbooks are not a good example for you to choose. First they are a relatively small budget item for schools. Maybe each kid uses books that cost a total of $500 new each year. But the books are used for several years so maybe the cost per kid per year is $150. Even if there were a wide choice the difference in cost between the choices would be what $50 per kid per year? Big deal! And it's governments that go to the lowest bidder, not businesses. I'd much rather have a businessman decide what history books my kids should read than have that decision made by some nameless bureaucrat someplace.
Furthermore, my original question hasn't been addressed.
How do parents hold a for-profit corporation that has a monopoly on local education accountable?
Maybe the same way they deal with the only grocery store for miles around? For profit monopolies aren't nearly as rapacious as your government protectors would have you believe. The monopoly I worry about is in Washington DC.
ML/NJ