Today the American Federation of Teachers – the country’s second largest teachers union – is joining “global allies” to protest outside of the shareholders’ meeting of Pearson PLC, a London-based company perhaps best known as a government contractor for standardized tests. What’s irking the AFT and friends? Pearson is heavily involved in government-imposed testing, as well as trying to help make private schooling more affordable in some of the world’s poorest places.

From the AFT’s press release:

The American Federation of Teachers, along with teachers unions and nongovernmental organizations throughout the world, will speak out during Pearson’s annual general meeting Friday, April 29, in London to call for a review of its business model that pushes high-stakes testing in the United States and privatized schools in the developing world.

How the press release sounds:

We oppose testing, and we oppose people having the ability to leave the government schools that impose it. Because, you know, we need to force taxpayers to fund these schools that impose these bad things. Because they also force taxpayers to pay for us.

I’m not a big fan of standardized testing, especially that is used to superficially deem students or schools “good” or “bad,” but I can certainly see the utility in testing. It can supply useful information. I can also understand why testing fans want assessments to have real ramifications for schools, even if I think they over-value test results. Learning should matter, right?

The key to balancing everyone’s myriad desires and judgements – especially when there is no conclusive evidence what works best for all, unique children – is to give individuals real choice and educators real autonomy to set up schools with different policies and focuses. Parents and educators who value standardized testing could work with each other. Parents and teachers who feel differently could do likewise. It’s called “freedom,” which is good in and of itself, but is also crucial for innovation, specialization, and real-but-flexible accountability.

Of course, freedom also makes it much harder to maintain a monopoly over employment terms and labor organization.

To see what this means in real life, I strongly suggest that the AFT and its allies – not to mention Pearson people and defenders of private schools everywhere – read James Tooley’s The Beautiful Tree, which documents the existence of abundant private institutions serving many of the world’s poorest people, and doing so better than the public schools.

Why better than the public schools? Maybe because public schooling is so easily subjected to things like blanket standardized testing. Or labor monopolies. Or both.