SACRAMENTO, CA - For the next month, your faithful Capital Ideas correspondent will be writing, not from toasty Sacramento, but from windy and overcast London where I am on a visiting fellowship with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of Britain's leading free-market think tanks.

While the weather may be cool in Britain, the political debate is as hot as ever. Tony Blair's new Labour government is in the process of remaking the U.K. in its ideological image. Last week, the Scots, with Blair's strong support, voted to establish their own parliament. Blair's foreign secretary, Robin Cook, announced to the Trade Union Congress convention that the government will soon introduce a bill to eliminate the House of Lords (inconveniently dominated by Conservatives). Also, Blair has made a play for greater input by 10 Downing Street in the selection of the Church of England's bishops. As in the U.S., education policy in Britain is also a topic of intense discussion. The chief inspector of Britain's schools, Chris Woodhead, has accused Britain's teachers' colleges of mystifying the business of teaching with "woolly, simplistic, or otherwise corrupt ideas." Mr. Woodhead's view was seconded by Prof. Alan Smithers, a leading British education researcher, who last week said that much education research was simply "gobbledygook," ignored by politicians, teachers, and parents. According to Prof. Smithers, "Which of today's other crazes will be shown to be the educational equivalent of UFOs - much believed-in but with no hard evidence to support their actuality?"

By coincidence, I had the opportunity to see for myself if such charges were indeed the case. The annual conference of the British Educational Research Association was held this past weekend in the charming northern city of York, and I was invited to attend by Dr. James Tooley, education director at the IEA. Through the course of the conference, I listened to a number of presentations that were "impossibly abstract" (to use Mr. Woodhead's description). Some of the session titles made one shudder (e.g., "Sexualities, Pedagogy and Masquerade: Some Que(e)ries"). There was, in fact, much to justify Prof. Smith's warning that, "Education is an applied area. We want to improve the quality of that practical activity, not discover something new about the earth."

To be fair, however, there were also some very informative presentations. My IEA colleague Dr. Tooley gave a thought-provoking speech on the merits of private vouchers (scholarships given by philanthropic foundations to poor children to attend private K-12 schools). Dr. Anne-Marie Montgomery of Queen's University (Belfast) also gave a most revealing presentation on grant-maintained schools (Britain's version of charter schools). According to Dr. Montgomery's survey research, the admissions criteria for grant-maintained schools are far from elitist (a charge similarly leveled against U.S. charter schools), with the large majority of such schools admitting children without regard to their individual academic ability.

Over the next month, I will be doing research on grant-maintained schools and how they compare with charter schools. My eventual findings, however, will rise above "gobbledygook."

-By Lance T. Izumi