The thing about Austin “Danger” Powers is that he lived up to his middle name. The same can’t always be said for the American Enterprise Institute.

According to its website, “AEI’s purposes are to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism–limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility…”

But this idea of developing free enterprise solutions to public policy problems is entirely missing from AEI’s latest “Education Outlook” publication. The piece deals with the putatitvely competing goals of the No Child Left Behind act (raise achievement on the low end and reduce achievement gaps) and the American Competitiveness Initiative (pursue excellence in math and science achievement).

AEI’s Frederick Hess teamed up with Ed Sector’s Andrew Rotherham to write the piece, and they jointly concluded that:

Schools are meant to serve a staggeringly diverse population of students and a raft of competing needs. Buckling down somewhere will almost inevitably mean easing up elsewhere. The best we can hope for is an incremental, awkward stagger toward meeting a stew of public and private objectives.

The truth is that we cannot do everything. This means accepting disagreement and abandoning the tempting dream that we might reach consensus on what needs to be done if only good-hearted souls would examine the right data. It also means acknowledging that every policy decision will yield both winners and losers. What we need… is… honest and informed debate about whose needs take precedence at a given moment, what to do about it today, and what to leave for tomorrow.

The truth is that there is a system that does not require us to reach consensus on a single “right” way to improve achievement, and that can simultaneously improve achievement on the low end and stimulate excellence. It’s the free enterprise system, baby, and it’s your middle name.

Here’s a look at how market forces in education reduce achievement gaps, improve social outcomes, and improve overall achievement, replete with links to the full text of various studies.

And here’s a more technical look  [pdf] at the evidence on market versus non-market provision of education.

Education markets. They’re groovy baby. Yeah!