"a marketplace of "best courses" that the schools purchase"
The last thing we need is more attempts to shoehorn market-based approaches to education into our schools. Ignoring the matter of corruption among the school boards that would choose such courses (take a look at how textbooks are purchased for comparison) and the matter of politcally motivated interests that would undermine whatever market you manage to set up, we do not need the sort of close-to-the-margins, race-to-the-bottom, divide-and-conquer-the-customers approach that markets produce in other fields. Markets produce the kind of results that evolution produces -- sometimes beautiful things, sometimes disgusting things.
Higher education has already been undermined by market-based approaches. By focusing on what students are willing to buy, universities have lost sight of their academic mission. You see it in CS departments, where tough courses are watered down, where theoretical topics are pushed aside to make room for vocational training. You see it in humanities departments, assuming you can even locate them. You see it in the money spent trying to make schools look like suburban malls during a time when library hours are being curtailed to "save money."
I would also be wary of creating a monoculture, where the most popular curricula become universal and everyone comes out of school with the exact same way of thinking about the world. There is something to be said for encouraging some amount of diversity in our education system -- which is what happens when teachers develop their own curricula.
What's better, having courses delivered at home which are specifically created because of an incentive (money, wide distribution, etc.) with great production values, or having a huge proportion of the students be exposed to subpar courses delivered en masse in a classroom where everyone takes the same notes, and if they go to the bathroom or skip a class they miss something?
If there's a particular math lesson that was specially designed to teach kids in an awesome way, e.g. by an expert in teaching micro-steps one by one (and possibly be tailored to each kid through interactive features) ... why shouldn't more kids have it? Of course you should videotape it, and distribute it to as many kids as possible. And all this is possible, far more cheaply than paying an army of math teachers -- some worse than others -- to deliver "lectures" to kids sitting still 8 hours a day in class.
The last thing we need is more attempts to shoehorn market-based approaches to education into our schools. Ignoring the matter of corruption among the school boards that would choose such courses (take a look at how textbooks are purchased for comparison) and the matter of politcally motivated interests that would undermine whatever market you manage to set up, we do not need the sort of close-to-the-margins, race-to-the-bottom, divide-and-conquer-the-customers approach that markets produce in other fields. Markets produce the kind of results that evolution produces -- sometimes beautiful things, sometimes disgusting things.
Higher education has already been undermined by market-based approaches. By focusing on what students are willing to buy, universities have lost sight of their academic mission. You see it in CS departments, where tough courses are watered down, where theoretical topics are pushed aside to make room for vocational training. You see it in humanities departments, assuming you can even locate them. You see it in the money spent trying to make schools look like suburban malls during a time when library hours are being curtailed to "save money."
I would also be wary of creating a monoculture, where the most popular curricula become universal and everyone comes out of school with the exact same way of thinking about the world. There is something to be said for encouraging some amount of diversity in our education system -- which is what happens when teachers develop their own curricula.