Private Schools for All, featuring James Tooley in conversation with John Tierney

New York City

The accepted wisdom is that private schools serve the privileged; everyone else, especially the poor, requires public school. The poor, so this logic goes, need government assistance if they are to get a good education.

But James Tooley’s research shows that entrepreneurs in some of the most destitute places on Earth have found innovative ways of providing education to the poor, creating a large and growing industry of private schools. Couldn’t the same happen in wealthier countries – and even the U.S.?

John Tierney will interview Dr James Tooley, a professor of education policy at Newcastle University (UK), and director of the E.G. West Centre. He is the author of The Beautiful Tree (Penguin), a best-seller in India and winner of the 2010 Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Prize, based on his ground-breaking research on private education for the poor in India, China and Africa.