Here is the great journalist Juan Gonzalez interviewing CTU President Karen Lewis and Professor Lois Wiener on Race to the Top. Arne Duncan, and privatization.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Privatization, Race to the Top

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Michael Paul Goldenberg says:

October 26, 2012 at 8:53 pm

Does the “business model” actually work all that well for business, on average?

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- Alan says:
  
  October 27, 2012 at 8:39 am
  
  Ha – I just had the same thought.
  
  The answer is yes – but only for a very small number of very wealthy people at the top, who do just fine even when the business implodes.
  
  Sounds familiar…
  
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Suzie McGlone says:

October 26, 2012 at 8:58 pm

This video from last night’s Boston School Committee includes great testimony from a “failing school’s” principal. She speaks from about minutes 40-50, and it is truly worth it! She tells a story that has happened already in Boston and will probably happen again and again.

Thanks for your consideration.

Suzie McGlone http://www.cityofboston.gov/cable/video_library.asp?id=2857

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Tim Holt says:

October 26, 2012 at 9:18 pm

I wrote about the business model and education several years ago here: http://holtthink.tumblr.com/post/25291144880/education-and-the-business-model

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timholt2007 says:

October 26, 2012 at 9:19 pm

I posted about that here: http://holtthink.tumblr.com/post/25291144880/education-and-the-business-model Thanks for keeping the conversation going

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Sheila says:

October 26, 2012 at 10:43 pm

Excellent interview. Professor Weiner sees right through Common Core State Standards.

Thanks for posting this, Diane. I wouldn’t have known about these women.

Good intro by Gonzalez.

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Jon Awbrey says:

October 26, 2012 at 11:14 pm

The paleo-business model used to work well enough. That’s because each business paid attention to the fundamentals and minded its own business, which wasn’t the business of government.

The neo-business model suffers from STD (Short-Term Disease), in other words, terminal myopia. It makes its way from boom to bust as a parasite on stored reserves that nature and nurture created over the long haul that came before it, with no idea how the resources it consumes were created in the first place, nor any desire to sustain the host that makes its business possible.

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- Teaching Economist says:
  
  October 27, 2012 at 1:38 am
  
  The question is how do you determine what the business of government is and what it is not the business of government.
  
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  - Jon Awbrey says:
    
    October 27, 2012 at 11:40 am
    
    We the People once decided, and evidently must keep deciding, whether to live under corporate governance or whether to live under democratic governance. They are fundamentally different forms of governance. Corporations have their place within democratic societies but democratic societies cannot survive in the belly of a corporate state.
    
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  - teachingeconomist says:
    
    October 27, 2012 at 10:31 pm
    
    What is the place? Should corporations provide food, shelter, medicine?
    
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  - LG says:
    
    October 27, 2012 at 12:54 pm
    
    You look at what makes a society what it is, and that is its people. Then you look at what its people need and value. Besides the basics (food, clean water, clothing, shelter, and healthcare), society’s greatest need is an opportunity to contribute to the society itself AND to the future evolution of humankind. Creating drones who are cogs in the wheel of a “big machine” does nothing to advance society. It is the fostering of critical thinking and emotional growth that propels humankind to further evolution.
    
    Obviously this is an over-simplification, but the business model is primarily based on the efficiency of resources (raw materials) and operating costs so that those in charge may reap the most benefit. While the manipulation of raw materials and the stream-lining of production lines may create a more efficient system, this model does not work when applied to education due to the very nature of the “raw materials.”
    
    Education deals with people on all ends with a large emphasis on the “raw materials” (students and their familial upbringing and communities). Those who contribute to their success (teaching staff, principals, supervisors and superintendents) are not 100% able to control these raw materials–in fact, they cannot control them at all just like a conductor cannot control the musicians and the instruments of the orchestra in his or her charge. It is through suggestion of effort that educators can help serve their constituency.
    
    The only real “business-end” of this system is found within the parts that deal with the manipulation of concrete materials and their sub-systems, i.e. buildings and grounds maintenance, food preparation, technology purchasing and maintenance, and the purchasing of office supplies and print/recorded materials utilized as instructional aids. Unfortunately, the purchase of instructional aids is often for the purpose of using them as a substitute for curriculum instead of as the supplemental resources they were originally intended to be.
    
    Those with the greatest power, money and, therefore, influence who claim that this service system can be and should be run as a business model do not have the knowledge or experience with this type of system of make such claims. There are far too many variables affecting the outcome than can be found in a traditional business.
    
    Another reason that it is a mistake to liken an education system to a business can be found in the system’s purpose. The goal of educating a populace is not to provide private profit; education is a public investment. The business model provides for the profit of only a few. Words like “choice, competition, standards,” etc. point to the elevation of a minority within the system: those who will profit at the expense of the rest of the system.
    
    Now profit is not necessarily a bad thing. Profit in the business-sense can aid everyone in society to be in a better place to contribute to human advancement when used for humanitarian efforts. Often these “humanitarian efforts” are rewarded with tax-break incentives. Are they truly humanitarian, then? A real travesty is in the practice of giving public funding through government grants to for-profit educational instructions.
    
    The traditional business model infringes on the opportunities of citizens by creating an elite group of powerful people who are allowed, through the act of buying, to heavily influence the decisions of those guardians of our laws, the policy-makers.
    
    Business for the purpose of profit-making for some (whether that “profit” is in the form of wealth, education, or opportunity) at the expense of others has no place in a public system that was created to provide opportunities for citizens to contribute to the advancement of humanity.
    
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  - teachingeconomist says:
    
    October 27, 2012 at 10:29 pm
    
    Typically food, shelter, clothing, and medical care are provided by private firms purchased in the market. Water, on the other hand, along with other services are often provided by local governments. Yet many other utilities, like electricity and phone services are provided privately, but heavily regulated.
    
    Some types of insurance, like automobile insurance, are provided in private markets, some like health insurance are provided both by private companies and the government, others, like unemployment insurance, only the government provides.
    
    Education has always been a mix. About twice as many K-12 students attend private schools as attend charter schools. The vast majority attend traditional schools with geographic admission requirements. Post secondary education, of course, has always been very mixed. I know you see a distinction between the two, but I see it as a distinction that does not make much of a difference, at least at the high school level.
    
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Lehrer says:

October 27, 2012 at 12:35 am

We have gone from Piaget to Pinochet.

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- Jon Awbrey says:
  
  October 27, 2012 at 1:14 pm
  
  With a whole lot of Pinocchio in the mix.
  
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  - ReTiredbutMisstheKids says:
    
    October 28, 2012 at 5:26 am
    
    Lehrer & Jon: Brilliant!
    
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Passionate SPED Teacher says:

October 27, 2012 at 11:27 am

While some say simplistic, here is my favorite rebuttal to using the business model in education : http://www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries.html

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Joe Nathan says:

October 27, 2012 at 11:40 pm

Enforced inequity which the Chicago, NY and other urban districts have maintained for years does not seem to bother you. The late Senator Paul Wellstone strongly opposed allowing “public” schools to have admissions tests. I keep waiting to hear a condemnation of pseudo “public” schools that uses test. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/education/a-grueling-admissions-test-highlights-a-racial-divide.html?_r=1

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Prof W says:

October 28, 2012 at 1:36 pm

Weiner was right on target and I was so glad to finally hear someone else acknowledge that education is basically being used as ruse to conceal that lack of a jobs program. I have been saying this for decades. –ever since I earned my first college degree and could not find work that paid more than minimum wage. Three more degree programs later and I am no better off, because I chose human services fields and this country does not value human beings or professionals who work with them.

The “college and careers” focus beginning in primary education is smoke and mirrors to instill false hopes and conceal facts. The truth is that, the demise of labor unions, supported by the Greedy Old Party (GOP) and Democrats alike, has paved the way for big business to increase profits by exploiting workers.

No amount of education can overcome the fact that highly profitable corporations do not provide many jobs that pay a livable wage. That is why we already have so many college educated folks who are underemployed and working as waiters, bartenders, sales clerks, etc. Many are working in minimum wage jobs and can’t make ends meet, while owing a fortune in student loans –which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so they are essentially indentured servants to lifelong debts. (Businesses have more options for discharging their debts than real people do.) When there are so many college graduates locked out of the middle class, there are even fewer opportunities for upward mobility for people with less education.

Thomas Jefferson said, “I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness… Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

Corporations are now our “kings, priests and nobles”: We have become a nation of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation.

The rich have taken over this country, run the media and control education. Since the victors write history, no one will be learning about this in mainstream media or the schools of “choice” run by big business. Our government representatives and their cronies, from the president on down, are culpable for permitting the growth of this highly stratified society.

I think Jefferson is probably wishing that his grave was equipped with a dead ringer.

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