In July 2009, governors, legislators, and other state and local leaders interested in issues of state policy making in education gathered at the ECS National Forum on Education Policy. Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business Professor and author of Disrupting Class, told them: States have not managed well the evolution of the business model for public education. As a result, public education is expensive and is not necessarily meeting the needs of the people.
But improvement is possible if states make room for innovations in education, and do not let ideas that better meet the needs of the market get killed or co-opted because they don't meet the needs of the existing model.
Note: Christensen also gave a similar speech in 2005.