March 13, 2014
When Americans think about private education, what likely comes to mind are posh-sounding names like Milton or Collegiate, where the elites of Boston and Manhattan -- for the low, low price of $40,000 a year -- send their offspring to give them a small leg up in the race to Harvard or Yale. But in developing countries, private schools are a big deal too, and they play a very different role: For just cents a day, they're giving some of the world's very poorest children a chance to escape the absolute deprivation their parents have suffered their whole lives. And by showing what can be achieved in schools where teachers actually make an effort to teach and where principals actually care about results, they're laying the basis for a revolution in global education.