Wish it were so, because it's pretty clear that something radical needs to be done to improve the education of that part of the public now trapped in an education system that clearly doesn't work.

The best that Bob Barnett of the Katz camp can do in response to the "radical" charge is to reply that the campaigns "are not miles apart, they're inches apart," and that Katz feels "the first mission for the mayor is to make public schools work."

To that end, Katz wants to change the function of the Board of Education from "being a direct provider of services to being a purchaser." Street says that means his opponent is interested in "privatizing public education," but Katz simply wants to invite bids from charter schools, community schools, schools run by the teachers union, religious schools, for profit schools - whoever could meet the criteria and standards.

If that's radical, someone ought to tell the mayor of Chicago because that's precisely the reform approach of his new school superintendent. Out in the Windy City, their goal is to get their kids educated, and they really don't care who does it. They just want it done. Right. Now.

If Katz really wanted to get radical, he'd expand his new approach based on purchasing rather than providing services way beyond just schools. He should point out that city and city-related agencies actually have a conflict of interest when they act as a provider rather than purchaser of services.

If someone comes along and offers cheaper private transit services than SEPTA now provides, SEPTA has minimal interest in even listening to the proposal. The same's true for the city's housing authority and trash collection division of the Streets Department.

If the schools, SEPTA, PHA and the Streets Department, among others, viewed themselves as purchasers of services rather than providers, a real revolution in Philadelphia could blossom. Let's call it "Bubble-Up" economics as opposed to the trickle-down approach that's been tried in the past.

The model for Bubble-Up is the experience of TastyKake a few years ago when it was looking to both increase profits and reduce labor tensions. Tasty offered its truck drivers the chance to become entrepreneurs by buying both their routes and their trucks.

The company helped its employees finance the purchases, setting them up in business for themselves. Drivers became owner/operators, and within a few years the routes that were originally sold for $50,000 became worth $150,000.

Following the same basic premise, bus and trash routes, schools or housing projects could be sold to drivers, teachers and tenants or PHA employees. Instead of employing thousands of workers, the city would use its financing muscle and existing transit, school, trash collection and housing budgets to pay the new entrepreneurs for operating their "routes" or schools.

Instead of thousands of public employees, the city would be creating thousands of small entrepreneurs. With their "sweat equity," just as with the Tasty drivers, all these entrepreneurs would be building equity in their own businesses.

They'd still have their wages and benefits, but they'd also build equity in a business they could leave to their family or sell if they wanted to retire to Florida.

This Bubble-Up approach to ensuring that public services are provided will only work, however, if city agencies see themselves as purchaser rather than provider of services. Yes, this is radical and, yes, yes, yes, some will dismiss it as just another form of that dreaded word "privatization."

The simple-yet-profound difference, as in Tasty's case, is that Bubble-Up economics enables today's public employees to turn today's sweat into tomorrow's equity. Taxpayers would be seen as customers, not complainers. The workers, now known as entrepreneurs, would willingly cut any fat or inefficiency because that would increase their equity.

In a play on Chicago's favorite slogan, this simple, radical approach could turn Philadelphia into the City That Works, For Itself.

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