Rita Solnet is a parent activist in Florida who works hard to support public education in Palm Beach County, in Florida, and across the nation. She is a co-founder of Parents Across America.
She writes in response to the article about whether schools are and are not like businesses:
| I am a product of corporate America and still involved in organizational consulting for corporate America.I listened to the lobbyists and the FL BOE members recklessly scatter business terms throughout their State BOE meeting this week. At one point I wanted to shout “these business terms are for companies with products; they’re not meant for the process of educating children.” Not to mention the fact that some of the terms were preposterously misused.Frequently interspersed with education jargon were terms like: Rebranding; ROI (return on investment);, ROA (return on assets); Six Sigma (a program emphasizing quality and perfection in production); Seedcorn (money set aside to generate more profit in future); Market Leader (referring to the state being a ‘market leader’) and others.
If I closed my eyes I could have been in the board room of any of my clients. Outside of the obvious fact that children are not products and that business methods are not interchangeable nor conducive to educating our children, I discovered something else. Many of them grossly misused these terms. It appears to me they are trying to force fit education into a business operating mold but they are botching that up too. The light bulb turned on for me when I glanced at the FL BOE Strategic Plan. Every goal was listed as “TBD (to be determined). I nearly laughed out loud. No corporation in the world would submit a Strategic Plan to their Board of Directors for SIGNATURES with every Goal listed as “to be determined!” Sigh. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
in business, if you get a shipment of widgets with manufacturing flaws, you toss or return the shipment, get a refund from the manufacturer, and get new parts.
in education, when we get a student who struggles, or has learning problems, or comes from a challenging home situation, we teach them even harder–we devote even more time and attention to their learning needs–we help them figure out how to be more successful in spite of the struggles and challenges in their lives. we make sure that school becomes a safe haven, a soft place to land, and a place they know is welcoming and nurturing.
instead of listening to more “advice” about running schools like businesses, and developing business plans for schools, how about we start creating “school improvement plans” for our businesses? how about we send in teams of teachers and school secretaries and custodians to the local dry cleaner or physician’s office, and provide them with some strategies for how to run their offices more efficiently with fewer resources, or how to handle phone calls from angry customers (parents)?
every time I wait in my doctor’s office at the reception desk while the person behind the window ignores me as I stand there waiting, or someone puts me on hold for 15 minutes listening to bad Muzak, i think of how much better run and more efficiently schools are run than many businesses I frequent–and why teachers are being forced to emulate business practices when the truth is that most businesses would do well to be run as well as your average neighborhood school is run.
In your first paragraph you speak of shipments with flaws and how the consumer can send them back. It came to mind that what Louisiana is doing with taxpayer money is shipping it to voucher schools, but if the student that comes with it doesn’t fit, the student is sent back to the public schools, our doors will be open, but those voucher schools do not refund the money that they originally received from the public funds. The public schools must then, and we will, educate the student with no money to help us do that. There is something wrong with this picture, isn’t there?
i think the money winds up following the kid, but there have been stories about charter schools fudging the data around “cut dates” so they can “count” kids as being on their rolls, then send the kids back to the home public school after they get their money.
as always, the issue boils down to money. and as teachers, we are ill prepared or suited to fight this war as many of us went into teaching because money was not a strong motivator for us.
the stories are true. Last spring Capitol High (charter) sent a batch of students back to Tara High (public) a few weeks before test day. A friend, Spanish teacher and first year got 45 extra students.45!
If the charters were forced to take any child who appeared and to properly test and serve any special needs child, including those with severe disabilities and autism according to the FEDERAL guidelines, we would probably be free of the charters within one school year. One reason, beyond their not knowing how to teach special ed. kids, and not wanting to deal with teachers who do (we can be very strong advocates) and getting parents breathing down their necks is the fact that you have to have a certified special education teacher to sign the IEP and no special ed teacher in her right mind is going to sign one that is not right because they are legal documents that can be taken to court.
“Every goal was listed as “TBD (to be determined). I nearly laughed out loud. No corporation in the world would submit a Strategic Plan to their Board of Directors for SIGNATURES with every Goal listed as “to be determined!””
Yet, in that lies enormous danger! Admin can do what they want and a naive BOE will simply condone!
Pelosi. “We need yo pass it to see whats in it”. Seems to fit the “to be determined” format.
You cannot run a school like a business, not a public school, because public schools can’t weed out the products that don’t sell, don’t make them money and are not popular. When an item does not sell at Walmart they quite stocking that product. In addition, teachers are not like employees, they are closer to being ministers. They are living out a calling, not doing a job. If they ARE doing a job then they won’t last 3 years, probably not 1.
This corporate thing reminds me of the new bullying law in Louisiana which says that the victim can transfer to another school if the problem is not resolved. Is that not the solution of the for-profits, get rid of what doesn’t fit—-union organizers, people who are pro-choice, Democrats, disabled, blacks, gays etc., unless there are federal regulations to prevent such. That is why corporations are regulated, to keep them from discriminating.
Sometimes it takes me a while, but I finally noticed the one word that proponents of the “business model” never seem to use. While we hear them say “privatization” over and over, they seem to be totally avoiding using the word “outsourcing,” which in essence is what they are attempting to do. I made this realization while reading an excellent column by Steven Pearlstein at the Washington Post. He was writing about Tomas Lopez, the young lifeguard who violated company policy by saving someone out of his zone, but the concept, and the consequences, are univeral in nature – you get what you pay for. I think most people really dislike the whole notion of outsourcing and would support public education even more if we start sending the message “Don’t Outsource Our Schools!”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/lifeguards-ordeal-is-parable-about-outsourcing/2012/07/13/gJQAN6TtkW_story_1.html