Back when I was a conservative, I was a founding member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which is now the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
TBF was a continuation of work that Checker Finn and I started in the early 1980s as the Educational Excellence Network.
We advocated for liberal education and for higher standards for all students.
Checker was always more enthusiastic about choice than I was, but we worked together harmoniously in our shared distaste for humbug of any kind. We even traveled together in Eastern Europe at the invitation of the AFT, to talk about education and democracy.
When I left the conservative fold, I left the board of TBF.
While I still disagree with TBF’s love affair with school choice, I admire the honesty and transparency that has distinguished the organization.
In this latest report, TBF hired an experienced journalist to investigate why Edison failed in Dayton, Ohio, as an operator of a large charter school. Checker was one of the founding gurus of Edison.
The story is fascinating.
Most interesting is this quote:
“Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, whose sister organization sponsors the two schools overseen by the Alliance for Community Schools board, is among the most disillusioned about Edison’s effort in Dayton. Finn was at the table with Whittle and Chubb when Edison was conceived, and he was an early proponent of its education model. He said that the company’s “horror show” in his hometown is a special embarrassment.
“They did an abysmal job in Dayton,” Finn said. “I think it was an implementation and an accountability failure.”
An assistant secretary of education under former President Ronald Reagan, Finn said he has become “cynical” about the for-profit model in education. “Shareholder return ends up trumping the best interests of students,” he said. Having watched education management companies for 20 years, “Most of the models I admire today are run by non-profit groups.”
Now that is newsworthy! Checker is one of the most prominent of the conservative champions of choice, and he here admits that he has become cynical about the for-profit model.
Tell that to Governor Snyder in Michigan, where 80% of the charters are for-profit. Or to Governor John Kasich in Ohio, who has collected millions of dollars in campaign funding from for-profit operators.
And thank you, TBF, for showing other advocacy groups what it means to be transparent and self-critical and honest.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sorry, Diane, I almost never disagree with your views on anything, but…. TBF is not quite as transparent, self-critical, and honest as it could and should be. Its consulting “gurus” routinely work to underfund and disequalize school funding formulas and to distort education studies around the nation, serving to deprive the neediest schools and students of resources essential to equal educational opportunity. Education adequacy and equity are definitely concepts they have a hard time accepting, along with the notion that the democratic foundations of American public schools are worth preserving, improving, and investing in, rather than replacing them by self-annointed 1%ers and mayoral-appointed governance bodies, test-dominated teaching and learning environments, and blame/shame/pushout education service delivery models.
Equally importantly, the difference between the ROI motivations of for-profit charter school operators and the management companies that run “non-profit” charter schools is miniscule and insignificant in practical end-result terms. The latter accomplish their monetary goals, along with power-grabbing, teacher union bashing, and the diversion of taxpayer dollars from the REAL public schools just like their for-profit brethern via creative accounting, lucrative payment for outside “consulting” and management fees, and interwoven layers of disguised 501(c)(3) organizations.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I quit the TBF board because I no longer agreed with its philosophy of preferring privately managed schools to public schools. I felt that it had become unremittingly hostile to public education as well as to unions. I profoundly disagree with many of the studies and research reports that TBF funds. The only point I was making here is that Checker Finn, one of the gurus of the choice movement, was disapproving for-profit organizations. That is huge. After all, he was one of the originators of the Edison model. I thought it was gutsy that they had an independent review that examined Edison’s failure.
The Finn quote you picked was heartening… but this quote shows that Finn is still engaged in wishful thinking: “…there is ample evidence in Ohio and elsewhere that high-poverty schools can produce excellent results when the right school leader and teachers are hired”… and this quote was followed by administrators stating that their recent hiring of TFA alums would save the day. I wish this were true… but as you well know good teaching cannot provide food. clothing, and shelter for students raised in poverty.
Hooray for Checker! Isn’t he also joining Paul Vallas in a new venture to provide support to schools that serve children who have less than stellar standardized test scores?
Just what we need, more focus on standardized test scores!!
I think I agree with Mr. Finn that “privatized” schools, charters, and voucher destinations should be non-profit. Most independent private old style “country-day” schools are that. It does seem a bit too much to think of people buying stock in schools. Perhaps the non-profit model should be stipulated by legislations.
Mercantile systems have proven themselves to be very good at amplifying two things — Inequalities and Instabilities.
By themselves market systems operate in a relentless fashion to concentrate benefits and distribute costs — the very opposite of what democratic societies want an educational system to do,
But mercantile mentality is affected with a mad devotion to its wishful humbug and it is bound to persist in its irrational denial of the facts that people of normal sensibilities can see played out in society time and time again.
There is no doubt that the mercantile mind will destroy our educational system and our democracy if we give it half a chance.
I’d like to point out that for half of the time Edison was in Dayton, it was run by current NJDOE Commissioner and Broad Fellow Chris Cerf:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/11/another-cerf-privatization-scheme-fails.html
“Mangen, who today owns a school management company and was a board member for the Edison schools from 2009 until July 2012, said he and others “got sucked into the sales pitch.” In hindsight, they were too impressed, he said, by Edison’s “$50 million in research on urban education” and the belief that “Dayton was going to be at the forefront” of education reform.
Mangen said that when he joined the board seven years after he had been involved in helping select Edison, the company had changed. The goal was no longer reinventing urban education “but how do we maximize profit.””
That “sales pitch” came directly from Cerf, who is bringing in companies like K12 – eerily similar to Edison a decade ago – to manage charters in NJ today.
Those who do not learn from history…
Chris Cerf and wasted opportunities, perfect together.
“Shareholder return ends up trumping the best interests of students”
To me this is an acknowledgement that the whole Milton Friedman idea that half-way marketizing the schools will improve them is half-baked. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has shown with economic models that when you have imperfect competition and move toward more toward more perfect, but still imperfect, competition, you don’t necessarily get a more efficient result. (See his book The Price of Inequality.) This defeats the Friedman idea that becoming more competitive is always better. There are a huge number of other factors.
In the case of the charter schools, you are not introducing a market system in charters, because the public is still paying. You are just reducing public accountability. Is this a great idea? The evidence apparently is so against it that a leading champion is willing to abandon it. But I don’t see where his faith in ‘non-profits’ comes from. The only thing different about a non-profit is that it can’t issue stock. It can still use a school to squeeze money out for the people who run it. So income to the owners can still trump the best interests of the students. To me it looks like public accountability through democratic process is still indispensable, as imperfect as it is.
I still see the major problem with geographically determined school admission to be 1) non-specialization in schools and 2) poor matching of resources in the building to students needs and interests. Any efficiency gains through competition are a secondary benefit.
The flip side of public accountability is public meddling in education. How often has the latest educational fad been imposed on those in the public school system?
At least according to reports on this blog, which are very impressively wide in scope, there seem to be no efficiency gains because of whatever elements of increased competition there are. Also there are huge inequalities in information inside and outside—a key point of Stiglitz—and the damage done by bad public meddling is not undone by this. The whole fad for punitive school closings and charters is a result of public meddling, and the school systems are still subject to political control. What seems to be happening much of the time is the worst of both worlds, public and private, rather than the best, as was optimistically supposed by Chubb and Moe.
What case do you have, either from theory or data, that there is a benefit from increased competition here? Do you think Stiglitz’s argument that more competitive doesn’t always mean more efficient is flawed?
As far as geographically determined school admission, I think you are confusing magnet schools and charter schools. Many places have successful magnet schools that are still under school district supervision. The distinguishing features of charters, as I understand it, is the removal from district supervision, and placing spending the budget amount—from the taxpayers—and other decisions in other hands.
The adage is “It takes a village to raise a child” not “It takes a geographic locus to raise an economic unit”. But your persistent semantic distortions designed to disguise the role of real communities in the education of developing citizens tells us all we need to know about your view of education and society.
I live 300 feet from the district line, so it is not really semantics in my experience. The children at my local elementary school were required to split up for the next school. No doubt you can explain to me how that actually enhances the sense of real communities.
There is nothing about state and local governments trying different funding models that requires them to place their public education systems under the control of private corporations.
The current model in most localities was worked out as a compromise between competing philosophies over many years. It could be made more effective and more equitable in many ways, but that is not what the monied interests are after. They are simply destroying what we in a massive campaign to defraud the public and fill their own coffers — with no concern for what it will do to the nation as a whole.
Many of the criticisms offered on this blog about distraction of the community apply to magnet schools as much as any charter school.
If you look under “Michigan parents…”, you will find an entry where I discuss the asymmetric information problem. I suspect that it can be handled with proper regulation, but I might well be mistaken.
My view is that charter schools, assuming appropriate regulation, are essentially magnet schools. As Dr. Ravitch has said, most charter schools perform as well as public schools.
I think you are not getting that the point of charter schools is to be outside normal supervision by the district. Performing as well overall is not a compelling reason to put them outside supervision by the district, especially given the many examples of bad education and crookedness that have resulted. The basic point is that there has been no proven advantage. Why won’t you acknowledge that there have as yet been no benefits from the increased competition that was supposed to happen?
On community and magnet schools. Where I am, at any rate, the magnet schools are at a high school level. The issue of community schools is more at the elementary school level, I believe.
Were I am, there are no magnet schools, but the most advanced students usually take courses at the university, so perhaps that is acceptable in my particular location. The more academically advanced students in the rural parts of my states are not as lucky. One of my current students graduated first in a class of twenty one in his consolidated county high school. Any guesses about his access to advanced classes?
I certainly agree with Dr. Ravitch when she said that there are very well run charter schools, very poorly run charter schools, and many charter schools that are the equivalent of the public schools. I think the poorly run charter schools can be dealt with if states properly regulate the industry. Why close well or adequately performing charter schools?
They do not perform better than Detroit’s magnet schools. At the high school level the DPS magnet schools attract a higher performing student. The kids in Detroit want to test into those schools. They go to other charter high schools often as a default. The charter high schools don’t have libraries, programs, clubs, and arts programs that come anywhere near the DPS magnets. Most people don’t know this because the news media constantly bashes DPS but doesn’t profile the weaknesses in charters.
A lot of non profit organizations in education have stunning assets in the bank. I like your Stiglitz recitation, solid research behind it. A non profit in this context equates to a tax shelter, the motive remains the same.
Isn’t that what TFA claims…non profit, but $300 million in reserves and millions from the
Feds and the fee for each temporary scab is $2,000-$3,000. Charitable organization only for the Kopp/Barth family.
And we paid for it!!!! I want my tax money back.
Teaching Economist: I am commenting also here as the blog software makes the column too skinny.
I think you are not getting that the point of charter schools is to be outside normal supervision by the district. Performing equally as well overall is not a compelling reason to put them outside supervision by the district, especially given the many examples of bad education and crookedness that have resulted. The basic point is that there has been no proven advantage, and so no compelling case for removing public supervision. Why won’t you acknowledge that there have as yet been no benefits from the increased competition that was supposed to happen?
On community and magnet schools. Where I am in Fairfax County Virginia, the magnet schools are at a high school level. The issue of community schools is more at the elementary school level, I believe.
Is performing equally well a compelling reason to close the exiting schools?
Fairfax County has an impressive public school system, and I certainty was advantaged by attending by attending the high ability elementary education program at Pine Ridge Elementary School, rather than the local Little Run Elementary School. Has the local school district dropped that program?
Would you close or privatize a public park if it was poorly maintained? Sell it off to the highest bidder or just give it away to a developer?
Education is not like a public park. Different situations require different solutions.
Of course, only one by attending.
Re: Teaching Economist
There is nothing about state and local governments trying different funding models that requires them to place their public education systems under the control of private corporations.
The current model in most localities was worked out as a compromise between competing philosophies over many years. It could be made more effective and more equitable in many ways, but that is not what the monied interests are after. They are simply destroying what we in a massive campaign to defraud the public and fill their own coffers — with no concern for what it will do to the nation as a whole.
Edit: They are simply destroying what we have …
The only charter school I have ever steeped foot in is the Community Roots school in Brooklyn, New York. Should it be immediately closed?
I agree the existing structure requires compromise, but I am not sure that compromise is required for effective education. The most obvious example is in athletics. The students that do not participate in athletics subsidize those that are interested in a variety of ways. I remember one teacher posting here speaking of her inability to get a well deserved teaching position because of her inability to coach a sport. Why not have schools that meet the minimum scholastic requirements but emphasis sports and other schools that excel at academic achievement but require a minimal level of fitness for all students?
I think I’ve said this about 20 times just on this site, but what the hey …
Most folks I know never had a problem with the original model of charter schools. Many charter schools I know about still operate on that model. No problem.
What happened is that some people who are dedicated to destroying the our public education system as we know — people who have even stated that as their goal — those people saw a loophole in the legislative acts governing charter schools, and when they failed several times to put voucher bills over on the people they rammed their grubby phalanges into those loopholes and proceeded to tear with all their considerable lobbied and monied might.
That is when it got to be a problem …
I think we agree that there are good charter schools and bad charter schools, Perhaps if we could keep that in mind, the discussion could move forward. Lets keep the good charter schools, eliminate the bad ones.
Surely the point is to give every child an equal chance of getting a good education. Say public school A is a great school then charter school A opens up, creams the best students so that public school A becomes a mediocre school. It’s become mediorcre for all the standard reasons – it’s now got a large relative proportion of poor studetns, ELLs and childrent with learning and behavioural.difficulties and has reduced funding.
Is charter A a good school? Yes. But it’s done more harm than good for the kids in that area.
The piont is you can’t look at charter schools results in isolation.
It seems unlikely that the most knowledgable students and parents would leave a great school for a new charter school that might also be a great school.
Why not say that the students attend a poor school when a charter opens up. The best students at the poor school transfer to the charter school where they get what everyone agrees is a better education. The original school does become worse because the better students are no longer there.
Should society refuse to allow the better students a chance at a superior education because it would harm the education of the worse students?
And so you are assuming that militarized test prep and behavioral controls are a superior education? If so, why don’t the wealthy privatizers send their kids to KIPP? Even the Kopp/Barth children do not attend KIPP and they have access to a few.
Their claims of superiority are based on test scores and that means nothing to knowledgeable educators, those who have spent their entire lives teaching, not dabbling for a few years and then moving on to “lead and opine”.
My fictitious students are going to the Family Roots Charter School in Brooklyn, NY, not a KIPP school.
As usual, I am missing your point IF you have one.
You had the students in my story going to a “militarized test prep” school. They were not going to that kind of charter school.
I think your presumption is false. You believe that the student must leave his current school to get a superior education. In my experience the student will not receive a better education in the charter. The teacher turnover is unbeleivable due to low pay and poor treatment. Also, both schools are weaker and the neighborhood will become weaker if the public schools are shut down due to underfunding/shared funding with charters. The charters I have worked in provided an inferior education due to lack of supplies and staff turnover. It is all just a way for people to make money. There is nothing new or innovative going on except for the “CEO” and their family making undeserved money. It is all wrong and needs to end.
I co-founded a parent-volunteer-run project researching and reporting on Edison Schools when they became an issue here in San Francisco in early 2001. I have many questions that may never be answered, but maybe Diane or Checker or someone else who was at the table at the time might answer some of them.
1. Edison used completely cockamamie methodology to supposedly demonstrate its schools’ alleged high performance. I wrote press releases dissecting the supposed methodology at the time, but for now I’ll use “cockamamie” as shorthand. (The press initially repeated the claims unquestioned; then later wised up and started dissecting them — H/T Jacques Steinberg at the NYT). My question is — was the cockamamie methodology due to deliberate, canny effort to deceive or to incompetence and flailing amid the chaos?
2. The same question goes for the number of schools Edison allegedly ran, which changed all the time, supposedly due to different methods of counting them. Deliberate deceit or flailing incompetence?
3. When the San Francisco school board started moving to look into revoking Edison’s charter to run one school here in SFUSD in early ’01, Edison (then attempting to move into NYC and take over the entire Philadelphia district) decided to build a PR campaign around that, playing coyly on my city’s “land of fruits and nuts” image. It worked fabulously for a time, with editorial boards locally and around the nation obediently parroting Edison’s message and “60 Minutes” even doing a fawning puff piece — even Peter Schrag fell for it and wrote a positive view in “The Nation” (!). But ultimately the spotlight started illuminating stuff Edison didn’t want illuminated, and the NYC and Philly efforts basically fell through — and the stock price collapsed. What were they thinking and whose bright idea was this, and also, how did they get all those editorial boards so eagerly onboard to begin with?
4. John Chubb was one of the peddlers of the Edison snake oil. In a classic moment, when the Dallas school district moved to sever its Edison contract, Chubb initially told the press that Edison planned to sue, and then completely changed the story to make the claim (Edison’s usual false claim) that Edison had initiated the severance. Both versions were reported in the press. Then Chubb went back to supposedly being a high-status academic researcher. How did he engineer that transition in status? Other Edison snake-oil peddlers managed to cling to respectability among the uninformed (Barth, Cerf), but that one really stands out.
I have lots more questions, but those will do for now.
I beleive Edison ran a local down and out school district in Michigan into the ground. I believe it left the district in more debt than when it came. I wonder how much money people made from it all? I do know that our state charter association has a PR wing and will put out bs propaganda stories for charters in the state. I’m sure California prob has the same thing. Why on earth would a school need a PR wing? Shouldn’t the truth be told in the education of children? It’s amazing how bad journalism is in this country- parrot propaganda without truly researching the facts
Teaching Economist: I did not propose shutting down all charter schools. How to deal with them is a complex issue. As Dr. Ravitch explained in her recent book, charters started as a reasonable idea for dealing with students with unusual needs that could be addressed through the charters. But then it changed into a general solution that was a substitute for vouchers—Milton Friedman’s original idea which it turned out couldn’t be widely sold politically. I think it was Chubb and Moe’s impressive book that turned the free marketeers to charters as a solution, but I could be wrong.
What I think Chester Finn’s remarkable turn-around marks is the failure of charters as a solution to the problem of improving the education of poor students. I do think there should be more control over how existing charters use their budgets, and more ability to shut down those that are crooked or academic failures, or both. There may well be a place for them, but just not as a general solution for teaching poor children, particularly on an elementary school level.
I think it is important to repeat that the idea that introducing more competition is always better has been decisively refuted by Stiglitz. In his book The Price of Inequality Stiglitz relates how he tried convincing Friedman, who could never refute his arguments, but just tried to wave them aside. I have discussed more how Friedman’s program is a bust here: http://therepublicon.blogspot.com/2012/09/myth-of-free-market-ii-milton-friedman.html
Several of the arguments posted here apply to any charter school, independent of quality, and would seem to require the state to close all charter schools. They are
1) public funds should never be given to K-12 schools that are staffed by people who are not public employees.
2) K-12 students should go through school as a group in order to preserve “the community”.
3) High ability K-12 students should be required to remain in the traditional public schools because it is to the advantage of non-high ability students in the traditional public schools.
Can we agree that these are not very interesting arguments? We could focus on a discussion about situations where charter schools might be appropriate.
You seem to be having trouble recognizing that the main topic of discussion is not charter schools but the profit model in education. Charter schools enter into this discussion only because they have of late been weaponized by regiments of educational mercenaries in the war against public education.
I seldom see the posts here distinguish between for profit and not for profit charter schools. The arguments I gave above apply to any charter school, no matter how it is organized.
1. Staff of charter schools are public employees as they are paid by tax payers, if I understand it correctly. So that’s a non-issue. The only difference is that they are not controlled by the school district of which they are part. I will leave it to more knowledgeable people in the field to tell you how best to modify this.
2. I believe the issue of community schools is mainly for younger grades, and I don’t think anyone is arguing that even that is absolute. The objection is to wholesale dismantling of community based schools for the sake of a scheme that doesn’t seem to help children.
3. Again, the issue of special schools for the gifted in science, visual arts, music, etc. is not really at stake here. These are mainly for older grades, and magnet schools can work, when on a limited scale. One of my children went to a science magnet school and the other two to the regular local high school, which was still strong because the ‘creaming’ to magnet schools didn’t involve that many kids. What is happening if I get it right from this blog is a massive draining of children from regular schools, leaving schools with only weaker students behind.
I am certainly happy to leave these arguments behind.
It seems to me what is left is an argument about the proper regulation of charter schools. Clearly something more than is currently done in many justifications is called for, but what?
My suspicion is that the three arguments you wish all of us would m set aside in favor of considering proper regulation of charters will not occur because the real issue is who will have control of the tax revenues for education funding in this country, the current public school establishment and its unions, or the private for profit sector which is getting its nose in the tent at present under the umbrella of charters, and may try to capture even more by the voucherization of some or all of education. I see little chance of reversal of the current drift toward charters and vouchers because their rhetoric of “choice” is as American as the rhetoric of “free public.” With the contraction of the economy in the last several years, it has become clear that “free public” means “tax payer supported,” and the electorate has discovered that it doesn’t want its taxes to rise to service state pensions and health care for people who seem not to be teaching effectively. The public schools do well enough for the middle class, but are not able to move the mass of psychologically damaged poverty kids into statistical effectiveness. The public schools are not therapy organizations and probably can’t get done a job at which they are amateurs. Yet that is the objective of the public education lobby, to give EVERY kid what the student needs. Would that it could be so. In a world of infinite resources, it SHOULD be so. Public school teachers want to do right by every kid. But even without the privatizes, I doubt the teachers can restore interest in fuller funding of the public schools merely because it is the ideal. Charters and vouchers allow the middle class to escape having their education dragged down by mainstreaming with the difficult to educate. One question I have is whether specialized charters might be able to serve the needs of those children better than the comprehensive public school. KIPP thought it could, but appears to have fudged its success numbers by skimming.
Harlan, aka Falstaff.
Let me see if I can help you, Teaching Economist. We liken the charter school and education reform movement as a concerted business plan similar to the Enclosure Acts of the Industrial Revolution. We are all serfs and peasants. This does not have a just ending on the horizon.
Yes. Teachers in charters are treated like sweat shop workers and this is not an exaggeration. It is really sad. What Friedman didn’t realize was that the competition would have to come from the children in the classroooms and their families. His theories sound so logical on paper but are a nightmare in practice. They are just not a realistic view of education and students in the classroom
I agree with Dr.Ravitch when she says that there are very well run charter schools, very poorly run charter schools, and most are about the same as public schools. It is a mistake to lump all charter schools together.
Re: Teaching Economist
The discussion will move forward when the monied interests who are trying to destroy universal free public education are sent packing back to the bubble-worlds of ignorance and illusion they love so well.
Then the rest of us can go back to developing the sort of democratic, progressive, research-based, and reality-oriented education that gave us the benefits of widely-distributed knowledge and skills in the past.
Without it this nation and this planet are doomed.
There’s too much loot in the public money stream for the privateers to want to go elsewhere. Same with green energy. Same with roads and bridges. Same with garbage collection. Same with Defense. When Kennedy and Bush conspired on NCLB, they opened a wedge for business to play the game through accountability by testing not by voting. The public school community MIGHT be able to educate the underclass as well as the middle class, given sufficient resources, but only the teachers believe that now. They won’t work for free. The business way, with cheaper labor, is the only way open now. Learn how to live in it or profit by it, or prepare to be cutback to no job at all. Right to work has come to education nationally.
Harlan
… too much loot in the public money stream for the privateers to want to go elsewhere …
Between .5 trillion and 1.5 trillion dollars. How’s that being spent now? With what results? Are we disloyal to the foundation of American democracy for asking?
… Same with roads and bridges …
Do we doubt the value delivered for infrastructure spending? Is the American Society of Civil Engineers accused of being a subsidiary of the Democratic Party (or vice versa)?
The infrastructure funding gap equals $846 billion over 9 years or $94 billion per year.
In contrast, what did $100 billion of ARRA spending (including $5B for RttT) produce?
The private profit model is antithetical to public education. Its prospectus is fabricated whole cloth from one big lie after another — based on the idea that advertizing, PR, and propaganda is a substitute for truth. (Play music over list of side-effects and fade out with a montage of babies, puppies, and smiling children playing ball …)
The private profit model is antithetical to public education …
And the alternative is? Public? Private non-profit? Does private for-profit fail in healthcare? Are standards of care too uncertain in K-12 education for non-public governance structures to work? Are public governance structures (e.g. state and local school boards) working? Where (and how) do teachers gain the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in the governance of their own profession? To participate as informed citizens in the governance of public institutions? Are other citizens equally well informed? By what method?
C, D, and F-rated civics standards and curricula are also antithetical to public education. How is that being addressed? By whom? With what results?
If Bill Gates profits obscenely from cyberschools where students master an A-rated civics course of study, why is that a problem? Why is the private profit model antithetical to public education?
Because the vast amounts of money they spend telling lies would be far better spent teaching truths.
Why is the return on investment for telling lies better than the return on investment for teaching A-rated civics? Do parents prefer lies to the truth? What is the governance mechanism that allows truth to prevail over lies? How is the integrity of that governance mechanism assured?
Eric,
You constantly repeat an argument structure goes like this —
If people could get to heaven by drinking strychnine, why is that a problem?
I suppose some people have been led to drink strychnine through such inducements, but I say let them do their experiments unto themselves before doing them unto others, and tell us about their peculiar heaven when and if they survive to tell the tale.
Even then, I will reserve the right to remain a little skeptical …
You constantly repeat an argument …
Perhaps I’m trying to provoke a response that will hold up in court. In Zelman (Cleveland voucher case circa 2001), Justice O’Connor supported subsidies for children to attend safer private schools.
Although “weaponized by regiments of educational mercenaries in the war against public education” is certainly evocative, it won’t go far in court. Is the goal to win a PR campaign rather than to demonstrate that public education fulfills the public purposes for which it is funded?
Public education is ill-equipped to counter a future Enron (Pearson, perhaps?) that seeks a piece of public education funding. The Democratic Party has serious doubts regarding the good faith of teachers unions. I’d like to see the profession show Bill Gates that they are up to the task at which his own foundation has faltered.
But if you can’t convince the courts, you won’t convince Gates (or Duncan or Obama)–they will reason similarly, although the courts will reflexively supportive traditionally governed public schools and Gates will reflexively support innovation through markets.
But what I’m really looking for is an argument in support of my local school district that I’m not embarrassed to repeat. Posters on this blog have made it clear that the arguments I have made on behalf of public education are ignored or rejected by (or irrelevant to) public school teachers. At that point, I do ask if privatized education that fulfills the public purposes of education isn’t superior to public education that fails. But that’s only a hypothetical.
The bottom line difference between Dr. Ravitch and me is she has come to value governance over curriculum, and I support her former valuing of curriculum over governance. Ultimately we need both, as Dr. Ravitch highlights early on in Death and Life. I’m simply making the argument that curricular deficiencies can be addressed (in theory) through privatization. In practice, it would be a very risky (well, doomed to fail) approach. (but note: privatization is like strychnine, or “weaponized by regiments of educational mercenaries in the war against public education” doesn’t make the case that privatization is doomed to fail. Arguing against markets ignores the value of the teaching profession!)
So I’m not arguing for strychnine but rather chemotherapy. Perhaps we should back up and anticipate the circumstances where a court asks opponents of (court-ordered) accountability what (and how long) they’ve been smoking. Supporters of public education are imprudent to suggest that accountability (clearly ordered by state supreme courts) is actually a right-wing conspiracy to destroy public education and teachers’ unions.
I had an uncle who supervised road work performed with heavy machinery. His grandson eulogized him with a story about a question he frequently asked (even of his grandson): “Done anything stupid today, sport?”
As supporters of public education–and public school teachers–lets not do anything stupid.
There is a process for discovering what’s true, what works, what survives the truly high-stakes examination that reality visits on us over the long haul, and even conservative courts have in the past respected the expert testimony of those who respect that process.
But the latest wave of Impatient Opportunists are too impatient for that — they A-rate their own IQ in the Bill-yuns of $$$, so they just know they know they know the truth. So why test their New Droogs In Town on those tiresome small batches of clinical trials when they can run a viral marketing scheme up the flagpole and down the pyramid and test their Galvano-Therapies on the population at large?
Gates’ Heaven help you if your kids get assigned to the wrong experimental group. Oops, they’re sorry, but that’s just Social Darwin-&-Loserism, you know …
… even conservative courts have in the past respected the expert testimony of those who respect that process …
In education funding lawsuits, the courts have been vexed by junk science and charlatans.
Also, the courts will likely value Horace Mann over John Dewey. E. D. Hirsch suggests the enthusiasms of Kilpatrick supplanted the more focused insights of Dewey within colleges of education..
… assigned to the wrong experimental group …
Educators are exempt from institutional review boards. In congressional testimony, E. D. Hirsch repudiated unwarranted experimentation on involuntary human subjects (i.e. schoolchildren). Colleges of education have largely ignored Hirsch.
Hirsch also posits that choosing pragmatism over the thoughworld popular with teacher preparation programs is essential for “Making Americans.” That will speak to courts predisposed to Horace Mann.
There is a process for discovering what’s true, what works, what survives the truly high-stakes examination that reality visits on us over the long haul…
Would you have a warrant for that assertion :-)?
School districts that embrace that process win Baldrige Awards, America’s Deming Prize (Deming being an admirer of C.I. Lewis). So many school districts–so few Baldrige winners. What will the courts make of that?
Studies in 20th Century Philosophy, Nicholas Rescher”
“An interesting–an unexpected–aspect of contermporary American philosophy relates to the fate of ‘pragmatism.’ The high priests of this quintessentially American tendency of thought–C.c. Pierce, William James, John Dewey, and C.I. Lewis–while entertaining rather different conceptions of the doctrine at issue, were all agreed on the central point that there is a cogent standards for assessing the merit for cognitive products (ideas, theories, methods)–a standard whose basis of validity reaches outside the realm of pure theory into the area of practial application and implementation.”
Any thoughts on the percentage of teacher preparation candidates who can spell “epistemology” (or “Baldrige”)? Administrators? Board of education members? Teacher preparation faculty?
Jon,
Forgive the typos.
Also, you referenced a pub (in September) which makes some good points:
“Academic capitalism is not the inherent evil some believe nor is it the unmitigated blessing others imagine. … Public universities [Note: K-12 too!] also have a ‘social contract’ to improve society through the education of students not only for careers but also for life as citizens”
These comments echo court rulings from school funding lawsuits. Are teacher prep programs up to the task?
The theory that punitive testing and semi-privatization will dramatically improve American education has been refuted. End of story. So why don’t we go back to looking at what actually works in education?
What I find so bizarre is what seems to me—and I’m not an insider—demonstrated success is ignored.
There is a systematic ignoring of evidence. We know that early childhood education can have a huge impact, as Dr. Ravitch has emphasized. So why don’t we invest our money in that instead of high stakes tests? James Comer showed that combining strong counseling support in elementary education with a good school culture can do wonders for poor children. Why don’t we invest in his model? Albert Mamary showed that mastery learning, implemented throughout a district could bring poor children academically up to their middle class suburban peers. So why don’t we support this.
And my greatest interest is in successful school-to-work for those who won’t be college graduates. Germany for long and Singapore recently have apprenticeship and work-study programs that get students in the workforce, instead of jail and welfare. So why aren’t we investing in this?
Personally, I don’t care what mixture of private and public is necessary to educate all our children. I just look at the evidence. It seems to be that it doesn’t make that much of a difference if you take schools out from control of the districts. It just isn’t a magic pill. It’s a placebo, or worse. Get over it.
Becoming an evidence-based profession requires changing behaviors. Changing structures is easier (like the drunk looking under a nearby lamppost for keys lost in a dark alley).
Other perspectives:
“What if Research Really Mattered?” Diane Ravitch
“What Does it Mean to be a Research-Based Profession?” Bonnie Grossen
or this:
Reforming the Wannabe Reformers: Why Education Reforms Almost Always End Up Making Things Worse, Stanley Pogrow, 1996
Creating better techniques and technologies requires increasing investment in development, slowing the rush to large-scale implementation, and rethinking the role and structure of colleges of education. We no longer need colleges composed largely of individuals and courses that spread the latest incarnations of unworkable myths. Rather, we need organizations that can integrate research and philosophy with the development and large-scale testing of new technologies. Such organizations would have fewer courses and far more joint-development ventures involving university faculty members, students, and practitioners. Teachers and students could work together to design interventions and collect data on their effectiveness. This would force faculty members to confront the limitations of their ideas and subject them to review by those who must implement them.
NB. A few readings pertaining to our discussions are collected here.
Yes, I cited Making the ‘Invisible Hand’ Visible : The Case for Dialogue About Academic Capitalism above.
In the Massachusetts funding case (Hancock) Justice Greaney caught on and realized that the court was allowing a lower standard of evidence from educationists (e.g. school funding experts) than it accepted from scientists and other professions. That realization went nowhere as the court dropped jurisdiction.
Fordham rips Ravitch for not admitting teacher unions care more about selves than kids…such tripe
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2012/thank-you-diane-ravitch.html Thank you, Diane Ravitch, but…
* Peter Meyer/ December 4, 2012 * [image: Diane Ravitch] Diane Ravitch, the education-reform movement’s “explosive turncoat.” *Photo by OHSchoolBoardson Flickr *.
Diane Ravitch, the education-reform movement’s explosive turncoat, has singled out Checker Finn’s recent dissent from for-profit school models for adulation with a blog entitled, “Checker Finn Opposes the For-Profit Model in Education.” We can quibble about whether Checker’s comment means he opposes the for-profit model (he is more than capable of defending himself on that score), but it is true that in Fordham’s recent report “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: The Edison Story in Dayton *,” *Checker says, “Shareholder return ends up trumping the best interests of students…Most of the models I admire today are run by non-profit groups.”
I don’t find that quite so newsworthy as the fact that Ravitch extols the Fordham Institute, which she helped found, for “showing other advocacy groups what it means to be transparent and self-critical and honest.” That may be damning with faint praise, especially in the reformation-like context in which Diane has nailed her complaints to the church door, but it is worth pointing out that if Ms. Ravitch herself aimed to be self-critical and honest in the matter of “the best interest of students,” she would need to examine the public school model that she has, of late, been trumpeting. Here, honesty would require her to admit that there are many for-profit entities in public education whose interests trump the best interests of children; and teacher unions are the most powerful of the lot.
The analogy is thus: Teacher unions are to public education what shareholders are to for-profit education. One can plausibly argue that neither puts student interests before their own. As the famous quip attributed to Al Shanker has it, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” Even if Shanker didn’t say it, there is plenty of evidence—see Fordham’s new report on teacher unions—to suggest that unions are just as likely to put their own interests ahead of students’ as are shareholders.
I feel a bit like Rodney King here, but c’mon people. If we could begin to get that kind transparency and honesty from everyone in this debate, we might very well begin to seriously address the question of student interests—and actually start to improve our public school system.
– Jim Barnhill • 2 days ago – − –
Self-interest may well be the human condition whether one is working for a profit or non-profit, but the simplistic argument you’ve made that unions put the needs of adults over kids is, well, simplistic. The adults who teach kids do not do so in a vacuum. They need sufficient income to raise their own families; they need benefits to care for the health needs of their families; and their students need them to fight for the best working conditions possible because this greatly impacts their ability to actually teach those same students. I find it difficult to understand why teacher unions are seen as ‘pitted against’ the needs of students. On the contrary, I believe that when the union helps negotiate the best of working conditions and salaries that teachers can live on, students actually win the day. – – 0 – • – Reply – • – Share › – – – – [image: Avatar] KarlWheatley • 2 days ago – –
Unions are protecting the interests of middle class teachers, and the middle class has been getting the short end of the stick for over three decades in this country.
The shareholders of for-profits are generally the wealthy, people who have been taking more and more of the American pie for themselves over the last three decades.
So, you do write very well, but despite your linguistic cleverness, teachers’ unions and shareholders of for-profits are very different in important ways. As you know from classic “similarities and differences” activities in schools, one must look at both similarities and differences.
Next, if teacher’s unions provided some important obstacle to quality, we’d find kids in unionized schools consistently doing worse than similar kids in non-union schools, but that’s simply not the case. What we do find is that unions occasionally resist the efforts of the rich and powerful to re-make schools according to their wishes and ideology, in ways that often contradict the best research, and for that, we should thank teachers’ unions. – – 0 – • – Reply – • – Share › – – – – [image: Avatar] James • 2 days ago – –
“The analogy is thus: Teacher unions are to public education what shareholders are to for-profit education.”
ummmm…. no.
Teachers are the ones who are actually doing the work in the process of education. They earn their pay.
Shareholders do nothing for the money they get; rather, they hire other people to be paid less than the value their work provides in order to pocket the excess for themselves. – – 0 – • – Reply – • – Share › – – – – [image: Avatar] Sherman Dorn • 3 days ago – –
Albert Einstein once said, “If you can’t document a quotation properly, don’t try to fake it.” Even if Einstein didn’t say it, it’s still a good idea.