An Essay on the Privatization of Public Education

[Tansy_Gold]

This began as a response post in a thread on the take-over of 70 schools in the Detroit Public School ("DPS") system. (And edited to fix links; I hope they all work now!)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7906570

When several DUers suggested it needed its own thread, I thought it over, did some revising, and here it is.

The essay addresses two issues: First, the attempt to treat what looks like a symptom without even looking for the disease let alone its cause, and second, the failure to even identify the symptoms.

The core point is this: Instead of looking for and/or at the actual causes of the failures in public education -- and let's take Detroit and DC as examples -- $omeone with lot$ of $tuff comes along with A New Idea and trumpets it as the solution. This $omeone says (usually) that a business model will change everything. In a culture (ours) that reveres financial/business success almost more than it reveres God Almighty (because it generally sees them as One and The Same), business success is the ONLY success that matters.

But in the case of public education, a business model has not worked, at least not in the sense of turning out a reliable quality product at an affordable price. Too many charter schools are failing as bad as, if not worse than, the public schools they were supposed to "replace" or "provide competition for." And yes, I use a lot a quotes because these words don't really mean what they should mean.

Private schools are an entirely different matter. Whether religion-based or not, private schools do not take funds from the public treasury for their operations. Depending on the state they operate in, they may or may not be required to hire qualified, certified teachers, to test students on mandated performance levels, etc. Charter schools, on the other hand, often have the best of both worlds in that their owners receive funding from the public and also have far more freedom than public schools. Charter schools, like private schools, can pick and choose which students they accept and can reject those for whom they do not have appropriate facilities and services.

Whether it's school vouchers or charter schools or home schooling or cyber charters -- none of these alternatives have succeeded sufficiently to offer a model for the major improvements needed in public education. I'm sure there are success stories of either individual students from charter schools or even entire schools, but I'm talking about a new model, a new paradigm in public education. So far, charter schools operated behind the scenes as for-profit ventures have not worked.

Anecdotal evidence -- Morningstar Academy in Apache Junction, Arizona. Look it up. http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2008/12/index.html ... Operated by a crook out of California who skimmed million$ from his 60 schools there, Morningstar eventually closed in 2008 after just too many scandals, including a principal who allowed her son to teach and failed to report him when he was molesting students.

As Safier says in the above linked blog, an anecdote is not proof of anything. His blog cites the newspaper reports, school board minutes, etc., not speculation or opinion or personal experience. In other words, facts. My report here is the anecdote, of an acquaintance who had a 2-year associate's degree in Early Childhood Education, a degree usually acquired by day-care providers and a far cry from the four-year degree required to obtain a valid teaching certificate in the state of Arizona. My acquaintance, however, was hired by Morningstar Academy as a kindergarten, first grade, and eventually junior high teacher. For the junior high students, she taught English.

I knew the woman socially. She freely admitted she knew nothing about grammar, couldn't spell worth a lick, and didn't have a clue about the "literature" the kids were supposed to read. In fact, she tried to recruit me to take over for her, because I actually had an advanced degree, could read and write grammatically correct English, and knew more than a little about literature.

But the school was affiliated -- tangentially and illegally -- with the church on whose property the school operated, and I wasn't interested in getting involved in that kind of mess. Especially not for approximately $10/hour. That's what she was paid, when she was even paid at all. When the school closed, it did so owing most of the teachers and other staff considerable sums of money.

That's my anecdote, but the evidence of C. Steven Cox's financial scams regarding the rise and collapse of his 60 California charters plus Morningstar and the evidence of Imagine schools' connections with their for-profit parent companies does not suggest to me that BES ("Building Excellent Schools," the parent organization that is taking over the DPS. Their website is http://buildingexcellentschools.org ) will be anything but a means to suck taxpayer dollars out of the Detroit system and put it into the hands of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, et alia. And if not directly, then indirectly by giving them control over a substantial chunk of a major public school system. Not just a few schools, but an entire municipal school system.

It should be noted, too, that Robert Bobb, the Emergency Financial Manager of DPS, receives very large sums of money from the very foundations that are attempting to privatize the schools. (see http://www.detnews.com/article/20100309/SCHOOLS/3090359... ) Though this appears to some, including the school board, to be a conflict of interest, Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm approved the six-figure payments. Bobb is also a graduate of the Broad Foundation's superintendents training program. Can you spell "mole"?

What few if any of these privatization/charter ventures have done -- and I've watched some of them rise and collapse in the Phoenix metro area within the space of a single school year -- is examine the root causes of school failure. Does it have anything to do with the economic status of the school district? I don't recall DC and Detroit being famed for their overall high socioeconomic status. I think all of us here -- with a few ideological exceptions -- would agree that both Detroit and DC have for a long time been plagued with poverty and joblessness that are connected to racial divides. We do not have a color-blind society or a color-blind economy. No one wants to address that racism in terms of how it affects public education.

If a "new model" for public education doesn't address the causes, doesn't even look for them, then it's not going to succeed.

I went through the public schools in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights in the 50s and 60s. A solid working- and middle-class community, virtually all white, virtually all the kids I went to school with lived with their married parents, of which their father worked and their mother stayed home to take care of the house and kids. This model worked, but it only worked within the framework of a wider social and economic framework that supported it.

We no longer have that kind of social framework, not even in those working- and middle-class suburbs. And there were many communities where that social framework never existed. What we have now is a completely different socio-economic model, and its effects on the public education model have been developing over the past 30 to 40 years to the point that we now have "failing" school systems. It didn't happen overnight, and the solutions -- if we as a society even want to solve the problem -- are not going to come overnight either.


The other major point in this whole discussion is the very definition of "failing" schools. How is that measured? Who sets the criteria, and what ulterior motives do they have? Who determines whether a school is failing or not? Is it the school board? Is it qualified educators? Is it businessmen who want a piece of the financial action? Is it politicians with an agenda, either liberal or conservative or christofascist? Does it surprise anyone that "successful" schools tend to be located in wealthier school districts and "failing" schools tend to be in economically poorer districts? Race and socio-economic status are neither mutually inclusive nor mutually exclusive designations, but we are so afraid of discussing their interaction, so adamant that one is a matter of choice and the other doesn't exist, that we can't have a meaningful examination of how they operate within as enormous and important an institution as public education.

"Failure" seems to be equated, by implication if not overtly stated, with poverty. How far back, how deeply, does this attitude derive from a calvinist ideology of wealth as a sign of God's grace? (I would much rather see a sociologist in charge of the DPS than a businessman!) Does that attitude affect even our collective ability to dismiss the greed of the Eli Broads and Bill Gateses and C. Steven Coxes of the world as they suck the money out of our school systems and abandon our "failed" students to their own pitiful devices?

Who came up with the idea that a state-wide standardized test was The Measure of educational success or failure? Who profited from it? (I haven't read Nicholas Leman's "The Big Test" for a couple of years. It might be worth a reacquaintance.) How have standardized, objective tests affected the long-term success of the people who take them, those who "pass" and those who "fail"?

The example of Urban Prep Charter Academy in Chicago (see http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7908432 ) is cited as a successful charter school operating within a major metropolitan school district. What's lacking from the often confrontational discussion here on DU is the simple facts. Arguments are fine, but what are we arguing about? 100% of the graduates were accepted into college. Okay, fine. What colleges? On what basis? If not all of them could pass accepted entrance exams, how did they get in? How big was the class to start with? How many dropped out? How many are passing mandated (if any) NCLB exams?

But also important are questions relating to the environment in which Urban Prep "succeeded." What's the parental involvement level? Not just names signed on a "contract," but actual involvement. What's the funding behind Urban Prep? (It appears to be a local operation, not part of a corporation with a for-profit division.) What financial benefits, if any, did Urban Prep receive that are not available to public schools?

The example of BES and the schools in Detroit hasn't been analyzed sufficiently to determine how it compares to Urban Prep. Imagine Schools in Florida owe their for-profit parent huge sums of money. Many charter schools fail, and they fail worse than the public schools they were supposed to replace. And in almost all the cases, we don't know if we're comparing apples to apples, to oranges, to snow peas, or to sagenitic agates from Sheep Crossing.

The function of a public school is to teach. Its product is educated citizens who are prepared to take their place in society, whether that place is in the work force, in advanced education, in a family setting, or whatever. A public school serves -- or should serve -- its entire community. When a corporation takes over a public school and attempts to make a profit off the operation and/or educate the students to meet the needs of a corporate agenda, then the school no longer serves the public. Rather than rush into the privatization of our children's future on the imho unfounded belief that any change is improvement, we ought to be spending a little more time examining just what we mean by "failing schools" and whether the process of privatization will actually fix the problem.

What we've got is a leaky boat, and people like Eli Broad and Arne Duncan think they can keep us from sinking by looking for ways to drain the ocean -- and make a profit off the sales of seawater.


The notion of "The current model doesn't work, so let's try something different, anything different, because we have to think of the kids" is bullshit. The "something different" that's being proposed has not only not worked, but it has done its "not working" to the detriment of all involved except the investors. THIS MODEL DOESN'T WORK. Let's find one that does.


Tansy Gold

[msongs]

1. adminstrators (teachers) cannot fire failing workers (students) in public schools as business

if teachers could kick out the slackers, deadbeats, druggies, gang bangers, and other underperforming students just like an office manager can fire employees...

what we will have is all the responsibility with none of the authority to make decisions

Msongs

[Tansy_Gold]

3. And perhaps that's the wrong model to use

Students aren't "workers" in the business model; they're the product-in-process.

Our schools didn't used to be failing, at least not to the extent they (apparently) are now. So, what changed? Was it the education model? Or did the social environment change?

I'm asking questions; I'm not supplying carved-in-stone answers. I think too many of us have grabbed at what appear to be easy solutions without examining what those solutions are solving (if anything).



TG

[Nay]

4. As an almost-60-yr-old who can look back on different times, I do

think that the 50's and 60's schools were more successful because:

the social environment encouraged the dull kids to quit school and go to work--and there were jobs for them

Teachers were def more proficient; when I helped in my son's 1st grade class, I was appalled to find that the teacher
COULD NOT SPELL. How can a first-grade teacher not be able to spell?? She'd write down words for the kids to copy and they would
be misspelled. Words for first-graders. It wasn't like she misspelled "dichotomous" or "vivisectionist."

mentally-ill kids were not "mainstreamed" in with mentally normal kids (don't get me started on an exp my son had in
elementary school)

severely-handicapped kids were not "mainstreamed" either

this Christofascism crap was nowhere to be found, either in school or in society at large, except as a tiny fringe (Birchers)

achievement at intellectual pursuits was actually encouraged and praised by the society at large, not denigrated as now

college was not for everyone--only if you had the grades did you consider college--so HS was it. This meant that
it was quite rigorous compared to today's HS, which is a joke. (My son graduated in 2001 from a highly-rated HS,
and the classwork they did was nothing like what I did in HS.)

Television and its attendant visual media (computers, Iphones, Wii, etc.) have made intellectual or even hobby-type pursuits
nearly extinct. When was the last time you heard of any young person who collected stamps/sewed/cooked/did woodwork/read as a
hobby? EVERYONE had hobbies when I was a kid. We could actually do and make things. Now, if you ask a person what his/her
hobby is, it's "shopping" or "watching TV." Consumer culture has a lot to do with the downfall of school and intellectual
pursuits.

[Tansy_Gold]

5. I'm 61. My kids graduated '94 and '95, from a not-so-highly-rated

school.

1. Their teachers, with a couple of exceptions, were at least competent. Maybe not great, but competent. They each had a few stellar teachers and had the advantage of a solid "gifted students" program in grades 4-8. Both had AP classes in high school; my daughter was recruited by a small private liberal arts college, got a hefty (but not full-ride) scholarship, and entered two credits shy of sophomore status.

2. My son's kindergarten "experience" was significantly affected by the presence of a student with severe learning disabilities. The principal insisted on mainstreaming this child despite the fact that the teacher had no training in dealing with such a student. The parents of the boy knew he would be relegated to special education or even institutionalized and wanted him to have "a normal kindergarten experience," even though he himself was incapable of understanding it. Of the 30 children in the class, only 8 ultimately went on to second grade without behind held back at least once. Several repeated kindergarten because they had not learned the basics required (by the school) for first grade: knowing numbers, letters, colors, shapes, etc. The teacher had had to deal with discipline issues generated by the one student and all students suffered for it.

3. My own college-prep curriculum -- class of 1966 -- virtually excluded any opportunity to take "vocational" courses, such as typing. I asked a counselor why I couldn't take typing and her answer was, "Most college students are male and they have wives or girlfriends to do their typing for them, so we don't expect college-bound students here to need to learn how to type. I guess you'll have to teach yourself or find a husband who likes to type. I don't think there are many of those." My children were required to learn "keyboarding" as a requirement of graduation from their high school. The "life skills" class taught to all students in their district, which included things like budgeting, buying groceries, writing a check and balancing a checkbook, was required in eighth grade. Most kids at that age quickly forgot everything they learned. High school can and should prepare students for life in the real world. Instead it prepares them to take a test.

4. Our corporate-ruled economy does not care about jobs for working people. Until we break the back of that oligarchy, none of the rest matters.


Tansy Gold

[winston61]

7. How can you blame teachers when parents send them

pupils either unwilling or unable to learn? What do you do with the droolers that have no place in schools? I'm 55 and I work in the same store with people that are functionally illiterate. They cannot read, they cannot spell, they cannot write a complete sentence. Saddest of all they have no curiosity about anything beyond consumerism or reality tv. That they learned very well. All products of public education. I've suggested to the boss to start using a basic (say 2nd grade) literacy test on prospective employees. He says then he'd be able to hire no one. America, what a country!

[maryf]

2. Fantastic work, thank you.

K&R "Who sets the criteria, and what ulterior motives do they have?"

As you imply, follow the money...and the class divisions...

How can we change this paradigm to one of educators working on what works? Gatto made some good stabs at it, but I think we have to change the entire system before we can even begin to succeed.

[Citizen Worker]

6. The goal in privatizing public education is simple, $$$

I have a copy of a strategy paper authored by Lehman Brothers that lays out in detail the potential $$$ for investors in education. On the first page the report notes, "Public reform movements are gaining strength, from which the private sector will benefit." And, "In 1996, education could replace health care as the politically "hot" industry, causing changes and new opportunities for entrepreneurs."

Notice how public education and health care juxtaposed and the current "debate." This is a long term plan to take over what was in 1996, when the paper was drafted, a $600 billion a year industry that then comprised 10% of GDP. It is nothing more than a guranteed income stream for the corporations. They are not the least bit interested in the education of working class kids and their kids all attend high priced private schools.

The report is 67 pages long and I would be happy to mail a copy to anyone who is interested for the cost of reproduction and postage. I live in the Seattle area and you can leave an email for me at DU.

[yurbud]

8. three words: privatization is corruption

the politicians who sell this crap don't know or more likely don't care whether it works or not. What they do care about is that for profit businesses can put money in their pockets and government run ones can't.