By Troy Senik

Education ought not to be a sticky issue for conservatives by default, but it tends to be. While charter schools and school vouchers are both the most promising and the most under-realized policy innovations that the movement has offered in recent years, one can only prattle on about them for so long before beginning to sound like the sort of libertarian crank that is equally exorcised over the existence of the FDA and handicapped parking spaces. Great ideas and epoch-defining innovations often take generations to germinate. Ronald Reagan would've told us. Barry Goldwater would've told us even louder.

But while we wait for the teacher's cartels to steer public education to the inevitable cliff's edge where democracies are most effective, solutions need not be sacrificed. Indeed, the growing popularity of charter schools and their attendant slackening of rigid regulations in California provides an opening for entrepreneurial public management--think of it as the generic drug to free-market competition's brand-name prescription.

The main reason markets work, of course, is because they force innovation by penalty of expiration. In the benevolent Darwinism of an open society, the race is to the fast, not necessarily the strong. There are three steps that public school officials should take immediately to mimic this dynamism in the private sector.

The first is to expand the use of information technology in education. Over the past decade or so, the increasing use of computers, the internet and wireless networks in our schools has followed (albeit often sluggishly) the free market. Unfortunately, though, these technologies have been added to the system rather than integrated into it.

A computer should be more than just the newest place to write a book report. Moving more classes at least partially online could kick off a sea change in our schools. With online learning resources such as Wikipedia and ITunes U (the online music retailer's provider of college courses in MP3 form) already widely popular, public education now finds itself in the unforeseen quandary of competing with superior learning resources rather than video games and television for children's attention.

For years, children in poor or rural areas have had to make do with paltry class offerings and whatever teachers could be enticed by the districts' limited financial resources. With the global reach of the internet, however, no Advanced Placement class need be too undersubscribed to offer and no Ivy League professor's expertise too costly to share. We can now enter the Shangri-La of education: administrative localism married to intellectual globalism.

The second step is to accelerate the learning process, a change facilitated in no small part by internet learning. With students able to take classes at their own pace, those with slower learning patterns can keep from falling behind, while the over-committed honor student who plays three sports can avoid spending 50 minutes a day in a class that requires 10 minutes of work. If his high-priced lawyer father can find time for 18 holes of golf in an afternoon, is there any reason that a National Merit Scholar should have to hit the books until midnight before resuming classes at 8 AM?

The answer is clearly no. It's an irrational requirement sustained only by a lack of options. How is it that we live in a time and place where in the small hours of the morning you can get a cinnamon dolce latte in about five minutes at a drive-thru window, yet may choose from exactly one option in school scheduling? Our schools should start offering flexible calendars that allow both daily and annual schedules to be set with the relative pliability that we see at colleges and universities around the country.

Finally, California's educational system has to move from bureaucratic turf-wars to a service model that emphasizes the convenience of students.  Recent figures show that over 70 percent of students who arrive in the Golden State's community college system from its public schools will be placed in a remedial math course; 75 percent will never complete a two-year degree or transfer to another college.

There are two reasons for this phenomenon: (1) the system is designed to maximize enrollment instead of student quality and (2) educators and administrators at various levels of public education in California do almost nothing to coordinate their curriculums. By creating a more merit-based system and harmonizing learning requirements, we can stem this tide of failure.

How can we expect California's youth to be gripped by the power of ideas when the administration of our public schools is a testimony to their absence? A 21st century education should be faster, less costly and more effective than its outmoded predecessors. The steps above can help. Our children deserve nothing less.

Troy Senik has served as writer for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He is the founder of Coastal Conservatism.