One of the reasons public education is such a mess in this country is lack of clear ownership. Ownership produces accountability. But who owns the public schools? Well … the public, I suppose. But how can the public be held responsible for failure and besides, what incentive does the public have to hold itself accountable? It’s about as absurd as an Edward Albee play.

It also means that, when controversies arise, there is no clear way to resolve them. To mangle Harry Truman: the buck stops nowhere.

Take the case of John Freshwater whose stands accused of “branding” a student with the sign of a cross. Yikes. Sounds horrible. But once you read the story, you realize this is a complex issue. It’s not clear that Freshwater intended to harm the kid, and some even think the story is fabricated. Freshwater is an openly religious man teaching in public schools and has apparently long been a target of criticism for having religious paraphenlia in his classroom. So his supporters suggest, the incident wreaks of career assasination.

And so it is, an issue of child safety gets blown up into an issue about religion in the public schools. A local decision becomes a proxy for a national battle.

A private school would no doubt contain the damage by being decisive; immediately fire Freshwater or staunchly defend him, those are your options. But instead the whole district is now involved, a committee is being called, hearings will be held, arguments proffered about the meaning of public safety, the meaning of education, the purpose of public schools, the merits of evolution, and the separation of church and state.

In short, the whole apparattus of public education will be caught up in something that has nothing to do with its function: education. This is a failure of owership, and more fundamentally, a failure of our existing public education model.