Monopoly used to conjure up images of play money, little plastic green houses and the silver thimble. In the Microsoft trial, the term became a dirty word synonymous with one of the world's most powerful companies.
Now, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has used the word "monopoly" alongside "public education" to hammer home the president's idea that parents should choose how their children are educated. The statements have angered some educators while rallying others who favor expanded school options.
While addressing the Empower America conference in Silicon Valley on Feb. 28, Paige said "the idea of a public school monopoly is dead. It needs to be relegated to the Smithsonian because we are going to be in competition with other people."
The "already-dead monopoly" is going to be "open to competition whether it likes it or not," he said.
Paige's comments emphasize the president's desire to provide American children with education alternatives, which many public-school advocates associate with allocating more public money to private schools.
Bush has proposed that if a public-school student fails to perform adequately after three years, parents may be given a $1,500 voucher to aid in the cost of sending their child to a private school, where annual tuitions average at least twice as much.
The remarks were applauded by the largely conservative audience, but the comments were upsetting to others.
"I think Mr. Paige is doing exactly what he was hired to do and that is to denigrate the public schools as much as he can because that is the Bush agenda," said Wayne Johnson, the president of the California Teachers Association.
"If Paige is out doing this (speech) so his rich friends can get their hands on the billions of dollars now being spent on public school children and turn a big profit, shame on him," Johnson said. "If he's doing it out of ignorance, I can forgive him."
The remarks also sparked a discussion at the International Society for Technology in Education, said Jessica Cole, a spokeswoman for the organization.
"The secretary's comment evokes the discussion surrounding a voucher program. As a lifetime educator, I am concerned by the distinct possibility that resources could be removed from the vast majority of students to serve the elite few," Leslie Conery, interim CEO of ISTE, said in a statement. "There are many ways to offer school choices without privatization. It would be more appropriate to use tax dollars to fund public alternative schools."
Paige did not mention the "public school monopoly" when he addressed The Oregon Conference in Eugene, Oregon, two days later. The education conference was attended by local teachers, administrators and students from the University of Oregon College of Education.
"The reference to public education as a monopoly wasn't there," said ISTE's Cole, who attended the conference. "We were waiting for that and wanted him to flesh that out."
"The intent of the plan is to help public schools set high expectations and meet those high expectations," said Lindsey Kozberg, a spokeswoman for Paige. Competition "can create a powerful incentive for public schools. That's something that's reflected in his experience in Houston."
Kozberg said that in his previous post as the superintendent of the Houston schools, Paige found that despite competition from private schools, the public schools became the school system of choice.
Other speakers at the Empower America conference echoed Paige's commitment to increasing competition between public, private and charter schools.
During one presentation, Don Shalvey, CEO of Aspire Public Schools, an organization of nonprofit charter schools, said "choice is what it's all about."
He said that people need to look at education with a "Silicon Valley state-of-mind," where competition is the status quo.
Shalvey said that providing educational options is "the most important thing we can do over the next decade."
Tim Draper, who spearheaded California's failed voucher proposal last fall, said that "the public school monopoly should be dead, but I'm afraid it's still very much alive.
"I'm sure hoping that Rod Paige and the team continue to do those great things and encourage choice throughout the system," Draper said, "but it's very clear to me that a parent has no choice right now. They don't choose their teacher, they don't choose their school, they don't choose their principal. They choose the transportation method to get to school."
Yet others said that school choice has always been in place and argued that public education has never been a monopoly at all.
"This country has always had a plethora of choices," said Dan Kelly, a member of the San Francisco School Board. "The competition from the private schools have always been there."
The reason that some public schools are in poor shape, he said, is chronic underfunding.
"We don't fund (the public school system). We starve it and we expect teachers to act as missionaries," Kelly said. "Unless we get the resources, it's an uphill battle in quicksand."
"I don't think we need to create lots of models outside the public schools to draw (students) away, but we need to create new models within public schools," Kelly said.
He named teacher training, updating curriculum and re-evaluating scheduling as a few areas where schools can be more flexible.
Nevertheless, expanding school choice to charter and private schools is a clear goal of the Bush education plan.
In another example, Paige compared the state of the U.S. Postal Service in the 1970s to public schools. When companies such as Federal Express and DHL entered the market, the postal service was forced to improve.
"That's the same thing that's going to happen here," Paige said.
"It's a false comparison," said Kathleen Lyons, a spokesperson for the National Education Association. "If you choose to use Federal Express, you're not asking the post office to pay you for the right to do that."
"It just sounds like a nice little applause line," she said.
Empower America is a policy organization headed by Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Bennett, Reagan's former secretary of education, which periodically holds forums on issues that include education, tax reform and national defense.
Paige also remarked that he was aware that the choice debate would be a heated one, joking that "this is going to probably be the most fun part of our discussion that we're going to have."
"But we're going to make our case and have thoughtful people decide," he said.
