Ben Orlin kills it on the complete incoherence of the notion that public education can only be improved by increased exposure to market forces. This is something I’ve been brewing thoughts on for years, and Ben says pretty much everything I would want to say, except with his signature drawings and economical word use in place of my epic and probably gratuitous verbosity.
While everything he says is gold, I will pull out one point I want to amplify:
The difference between businesses and schools is that nobody cares if most businesses fail.
Research in Practice 
Hi, Ben. I missed your talk at JMM on Group Theory for middle schoolers.
Do you have a youtube of the talk?
I don’t believe so. But I gave more or less the same talk at the Circle on the Road conference back in October, and I believe they have video. I’ll see if I can get a hold of it. (Also, hi Joel! I think I haven’t seen you in like a decade. How are you?)