I have so many brilliant readers. I am happy to share this space with them. They understand so much more than the pundits, reformers, think tank experts, and foundation deep-thinkers who are paid six figures to tell educators how to “reform” the schools. When I worked in journalism many years ago, there were two terms that described arm-chair experts: thumbsuckers and ankle-biters. We hear from them all the time in the media. But they are not the true experts. The true experts are the people who do the hard work of educating kids every day: their teachers, principals and parents.
| this is what “educational reformers” don’t seem to “get” about education–education is not a business, it’s a relationship.every time a school is closed, there are families being torn apart. and not just the families of students and parents–”families” of teachers, custodians, secretaries, principals, lunch monitors and many others who make their lives in these schools. these people work together every day, share their hopes and dreams, trust one another in ways few lawyers or engineers ever do with their colleagues, and become one another’s families. sometimes dysfunctional families, but families nonetheless.and when a school is closed, or teachers are moved around among schools like so many checkers, these families are ripped apart, and those relationships become frayed and torn, never to recover. educational reformers and policy makers don’t seem to understand–or care about–the real, human damage that is done by their decisions.our communities are not characterized by the businesses in them, or by the amount of profit generated within them–our communities are characterized by the number and strength of the human relationships formed between their members. and so are our schools.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is so true. Schools operate like churches where individuals work together for the common good. Sharing highs and lows of putting on a school wide musical, laughing and crying together when children earn a scholarship or when children die, brainstorming strategies to help the family of a student who is suddenly homeless. These events create bonds that last a lifetime. Our janitor lost his father, our cafeteria lady lost her husband, our principal’s wife had a baby, our staff and parents showed up at the funeral home and made food for the families. The school needs a new playground. A group of parents donate money and time to build it on weekends. These are people who anticipate a long term (meaning YEARS) relationship with their children’s school. To this day, I receive a birthday card every year from the family of one a student whom I taught 25 years ago. Birthdays are extremely special in her family so I always made time in class for her family to share her birthday with her classmates. If this happened today, we wouldn’t have time, we’d be prepping for tests.
The business community doesn’t want to round out the ramifications of their reforms. Whenever I read of a school shutting down in spite of strong community protests, I feel real pain in my stomach. Education attracts people who have a strong service ethic and who prefer the company of children, not corporate careerists who thrive on competition and risk. Teachers are extremely dedicated to their own professional growth because they view their growth as helping children experience success, not failure. Wouldn’t we want people like this teaching our children? Aren’t these relationships similar to those formed by the elite edu-reformers in their children’s schools? Corporate reforers seem oblivious to their own lived experiences.
Teachers are the types of individuals who avoid conflict and work within relationships to build consensus. Corporate reformers live in a milieu of conflict. Their behaviors are classic bullying behaviors- the strong vanquishing the weak, the man subduing the woman- the market rewarding winners and bankrupting losers. Teacher’s good intentions are being exploited. That’s why I take their rhetoric and dumb ideas so personally. That’s why educators should confront them at every turn and on every level and never give up.
It’s not reform when a major university – like Penn – goes all Wharton school model PLUS allteachersarelazyunionmembers PLUS TFA PLUS KIPS. Just privileged, money grubbing grifting, not ANY actual education. You know, like Doug Lynch.
“The true experts are the people who do the hard work of educating kids every day: their teachers, principals and parents.”
Thank you for reiterating this.
Education is — and must be — a “business”. Schools are a business — they have employees, labor costs, capital costs, and budgets. Schools are a subset of businesses — the service subset; that is, schools provide a service rather than a product. In these respects, schools are like Verizon or Citibank. And, like Verizon and Citibank, any assessment of whether a school is succesful involves consideration of the costs incurred.
The critical difference between schools and what we commonly think of as a business — Verizon or Citibank — is that the ultimate purpose of the schools is to provide the service (educate the children) while, for the conventional service business such as Verizon or Citibank, the provision of the service is simply a means to the ultimate purpose of making a profit for the business’ owners.
Given the differences in ultimate purpose, it’s unlikely that schools operated by for-profit entities will — over the long run — provide a better service (education) than schools operated by not-for-profit entities (including the local school systems). Arguably, the profit motive coupled with fewer govt regulations/political burdens might allow some for-profit entities to operate schools more efficiently/provide better education than the not-for-profit entities. But, in the long run, the profit motive must ultimately force the for-profit entities to sacrifice service quality to achieve higher profits. This is particularly true in low-SES/inner-city neighborhoods where many parents will be too dysfunctional/poorly-informed to make rational/informed school choices, thereby greatly weakening the “invisible hand” effect that theoretically channels customers to the competitors offering the best product.
The better approach is for school reformers to identify and eliminate the inefficiencies/counter-productive govt regulations in the not-for-profit schools (particularly the public schools).
to put it politely, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. schools are not businesses; never have been, never will be.
what amazes me is, given the mess that the American business model has gotten us in to these past several years, why anyone would *want* schools to be run like businesses. as a parent I don’t want this to be the case; as a teacher I don’t want this to be the case; as a teacher-educator I don’t want this to be the case.
for the record, i don’t think the American business model is working too well for American business, either, but I’m not arrogant enough to believe that my opinion as a non-business person should hold much sway in the business world.
i wish all these business folks who believe that applying business principles to education felt the same way.
By the way, great engineering teams have that kind of community as well.
Teamwork matters. Imagine if your team lost a competition and the government said the way to win next time is to fire half the team.
We have to watch the business analogy. It has also given us a set of teaching practices and a method of operation that do not serve the mission. My family also performs tasks that could be called business related, but I have no intention of instituting a business model to “run” my family.
Here is a clip of one of our Modern Day Reformers. Does this sound like the same guy? He spends most of his time talking about opening schools up and inviting parents and family in. Where’s the test talk? Where’s the accountability? Where’s the closing down failing schools talk? Where is this guy now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqnZyTjbKJw
The reader comment you include in your post points to one of the essential conflicts underlying the whole school “reform” debate. The conflict is this: what system produces better outcomes – community decision-making, or market competition? The answer, of course, depends a lot on what kind of outcome you are trying to get.
In the marketplace, businesses strive to offer products and services that are sufficiently attractive to consumers to gain them business but cheap enough to ensure an economic return to the owners of the business. (This, as others have pointed out, is the key problem with for-profit educational entities, since even legally their first responsibility is to their shareholders and not their “customers,” the students. It’s an unavoidable conflict of interest.) Private firms do not maximize quality; they balance quality and cost to maximize profit under current market conditions. This is how the system works, and in many domains it works pretty well.
However, there are conditions under which the market does not produce goods or services in the type or amount that society desires – economists call these “market failures.” Classic examples of this are public services like police, fire, and, yes, education. Even things like electric, water and gas services are typically either publicly owned or else operated as a heavily regulated public utility. Education is usually cited as a market failure because there is a public benefit to universal education that would not be given value in the private market. Education would not be as high-quality for most families nor as accessible if it were operated solely by the private market. Education also brings long-term societal benefits that are hard to measure financially and would not be incorporated into a private firm’s economic calculation.
To hear many education “reformers” speak about this topic, you would think that “market failures” were simply a figment of the liberal imagination. Sadly, they are the ones who are deluded.
Another facet of this debate is the question of competition – and competition need not only be among private firms. In the market, competition is presumed to generate the balance between cost and quality desired by consumers. This depends on two things:
1) Consumers have sufficient, accurate information to decide which products most fit their needs; and
2) Consumers can switch from product to product, provider to provider, without much disruption.
Neither of these things hold in the field of education. Parents, and students, have valid opinions about schools, but they are not able to judge what the ultimate impact of a school will be on themselves twenty or thirty years down the road. This is why long-term reputation is important for schools, since we must rely on a history of other people’s children to judge what is likely to happen to our own. Research shows that even standardized tests – at least as currently conceived – do not accurately capture the impact of a quality education on children. (See the Perry Preschool study, the High/Scope program.) So the “grades” we have been giving schools are based on narrow criteria and do not offer the kind of information parents really want – will this school help my child live a fulfilled and comfortable life?
The reader quote addresses the second point. Market competition does not have its greatest impact by inducing firms to change their products or services; it accelerates the rise of firms with desired products and encourages the closure of firms that fail to please customers. Schumpeter called this the “creative destruction” of the free market. This may be ok for toothpaste manufacturers, or cell phone companies, but does the constant turnover of schools and education providers really end up helping individual students? I think that most researchers would say that this greatly damages a student’s chances for success. It also upends families and communities.
Finally, the last problem with the competition model is that outcomes are determined solely by those who are participating in the market at that moment. But we already recognize, as a country, the important public benefits of education. The reason behind democratic governance of public schools is to allow the entire community a say in the running of an institution that affects the entire community. This public aspect is entirely missing from the “reform” argument, for reasons that have more to do with ideology than with educational benefit.
Sorry this is so long – thanks for reading!
Excellent commentary, right on target!
thanks, Steve–that was my post above–we met in Plymouth last week. . .
Thank you for being our voice!! Please keep fighting for us!
As a teacher, I’ve always thought that schools function best when looked at as holistic organisms. It’s a complex ecology. Instead of assessing teachers based solely on test scores and thus pitting everyone against one another, why not assess the performance of the entire school and how teacher, student, staff member, parent, etc. work together to create a successful learning environment where all benefit.
I love that post by your reader. Last year, I wrote this note for the folks at my daughter’s school. It takes a village – my daughter’s village includes her school. Here is the note.
“So, when they cut education spending to near nothing and folks at schools (not just teachers), lose their jobs, who will be there?
Who will be there at dismissal making sure my kid waits for the car to stop before getting in? Who will be there in her cafeteria making sure she finds her lunch and doesn’t just sit the the whole time hungry? Who will teach my kid to run and call her Hollywood every time she steps in the gym? Who will speak to her only in Spanish as she walks down the hall, reminding her she is Boricua? Who will put bandaids on her cuts while humming Elvis tunes? Who will put down their mop and walk her down and unlock the arts room everytime she forgets her backpack? Who will lead her around the library, showing her new books? Who will laugh and hug and congratulate her Word of the Day, everyday, not just when she wins?
Who will care? Who?
Save our Schools… Save our Village.
Are we approaching edreform from the same trap that we got our children in? Our current education system is archaic and was built based on the assembly line model. If we are to truly reforming education we should start with the student. We need to understand each student is unique and what and how we could provide resources and guidance to enable learning and maximize the learning capacity of each student. Then we work on the environment surrounding the student and support the environment and systems that will help each student. Further out, we should look at each level of support from community, regional, state, and national, to provide the technology, best practices, and political frame work that enable each student to thrive. Instead of focusing on bandaging existing system or replacing one archaic system with another archaic system. We need a paradigm shift and envision that the 21st century learning has no walls, no boundaries, and no time limit. 21st century learning is about individual student learning at any time, any place and everywhere.
Many families have no one at home all day. Where shall the children go for their 21st century learning?
I can relate to the writer. I was in a K-2 school. To save the money district, we moved and made it a K-4 school. The K-2 school had a true sense of community and was a newer school. Our ‘new’ school was build in 1927. On hot days, my new room is about 110. Uprooting everyone was a huge hassle. Some people said they’re still not comfortable in their new rooms after a year. I don’t feel like I have the same voice as I did where I was. So I won’t be on the same committees as I was. We’ve adjusted but it’s just not the same vibe.