A reader sent an article about a for-profit firm in Pennsylvania that runs four alternative schools for “disciplinary” students. It furloughed its 50 teachers and administrators and closed down without warning. What happens to the students? The teachers? No one knows.
The teachers are in the dark about whether they have jobs in a month. They are paid very low salaries: $31,000 if they have benefits, $36,000 without benefits. The company is owned by the son of a Congressman. All calls are referred to a lawyer’s office, which has no information.
This is the sector that Republican governors want to expand. Government contracts with minimal or no oversight. At-risk kids put even more at risk in the hands of vendors.
Remind me about the superiority of the private sector. I forget.
Perhaps coincidentally, another reader commented on an earlier post about the market model:
Markets in education are insufficient, because they do not include the overriding public purpose and public interest in educational outcomes. Educational quality is not simply a matter to be settled between “education service providers” and parents. Our entire society has a critical stake in educational outcomes, and public governance and funding of education is a very effective way to make sure
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Free-market charters convert the electorate into atomized, competing consumers. Advancing one’s interests at the expense of others fosters selfish individualism and eclipses the notion of advancing the common good. Charter schools are not concerned with seeing their competitors succeed; they don’t plan to meet the needs of the whole community or for future generations. Asking them to do that would be like asking Burger King to focus on creating a healthy nation.
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“Remind me about the superiority of the private sector. I forget.”
You didn’t forget, the “superiority” has always been a myth so you had rightly dismissed it and moved on.
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RE: Market model and the public stake.
Recent post and comments connected the dots for me as to how we have landed so neatly where we are today.
My thinking has focused on the track in which the “failing school” lies generated a false need for misguided reforms, channeling public funds into private hands.
The other track, though, has been the concerted effort to remove the concern for schools from all but the parents/families and the “education providers”. This groundwork has been set for years by the efforts to limit taxes, driving nursing home residents by the busloads to school referenda votes to assure that their taxes don’t go up for schools when their kids are no longer in need of service. The campaigns to color educators as overpaid tax suckers, kids as failing and worthless, and schools as wasteful of tax dollars leads directly to disconnecting concern for the greater good, for society as a whole, for the original intent of providing a public education to all.
John Adams quote: “I must study politics and war, that our sons (and daughters?) may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”
Why don’t we pay more attention to the true intent of the founding fathers?
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Tough luck. Gee, that pretty much sums up the shitty school climate we subject our students and teachers to on a daily basis. Kids who need stability the most continue to get the shaft. And what are government leaders doing about the situation? Perpetuating it!
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These students are the very students who desperately need consistency/continuity in their lives, and we outsource their education to fly-by-night companies who either arrogantly believe or pretend they will be able to provide a successful learning environment. If the profit doesn’t appear, or if things otherwise go south, they disappear. I have provided counseling groups in alternative schools. Make no mistake, we all pay a steep price for every child we do not support and assist in finding a better path.
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“students who desperately need consistency/continuity”
Made me think, How long has your school district been in existence?
How long have these for profit school reform entities been in existence?
Now length of existence doesn’t necessarily mean quality throughout that length of existence but it does show what community effort is about.
How many of these for profit entities who siphon monies away from those community schools (and maybe that is how we should promote the public schools) will be around it 10, 20, 50 or 100 years?
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The labeling of children as “disciplinary students” is ridiculous. Being a former special education teacher in the inner city, I know that there are probably children with different learning challenges and to group them as if it is a homogenous group does a total disservice to the children. Implementation of an individual IEP for each student would do more good. I guess when you do not have a background in special education, you do not know this.
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The more I think about this label, the more frustrated I get. It is like these children are products being manufactured and the inspector checks and sees that some of the products are faulty and therefore, are pulled from the line and put in another pile to be destroyed or recycled.
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“Staffers were rewarded not just for doing well but for making sure that their colleagues failed.” From “Microsoft’s Lost Decade” by Kurt Eichenwald in Vanity Fair, business section, August 2012. Isn’t this similar to what is occurring in education by ranking teachers? It’s in the teachers’ interest to outperform other teachers in order to secure their job and higher income levels or conversely hope the other teachers “fail”. As this was a recipe for failure at Microsoft it will be a recipe for failure in public education.
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Yeah, it’s called “rank stacking”, kinda like a cow pie stack!
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“Markets in education are insufficient, because they do not include the overriding public purpose and public interest in educational outcomes. Educational quality is not simply a matter to be settled between “education service providers” and parents. Our entire society has a critical stake in educational outcomes, and public governance and funding of education is a very effective way to make sure”
I’d argue that education is no more important or of societal benefit than health care. Health care is market based, and market forces improve the quality of care often.
Would you ever consider limiting your choice in hospitals based on your zip code? Absolutely not, I’m guessing. But we do that with schools, why is that?
Why are there (2) very good hospitals 1/2 mile away from one other in New Brunswick (St. Peters, and Robert Wood), that’s dual administrations, dual facility costs, etc, etc. and dual costs from the state for charity care.
Because the market forces between them force them to innovate to compete. Robert Wood became a trauma center, St. Peter’s concentrated on women’s issues with the CARES wing, Robert Wood responded by opening a children’s wing.
The argument could be made that both hospitals improved themselves based on competing for patients.
Why couldn’t the same be said for schools and students? (and in fact, it does happen, only at the collegic level, which everyone is fine with, for some reason)
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“Health care is market based, and market forces improve the quality of care often. ”
Ever since the financiers, private insurers and huge health corporations started to “compete” in the “health care market” the outcomes of health care in the US have fallen dramatically. Look it up. Type in “failure US health care” and one gets 140,000,00 choices to read from all in about .25 seconds-ha ha.
No, the market based health care has not improved the quality of care, unless you only want to consider those who have enough money to be a part of that system. But for the rest, tough luck.
The same will happen when the financiers, big for profit educorps control what should be a public, not private, good.
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It ABSOLUTELY has… The US is the world leader in medical innovation for a reason.
Then you would support elimination of choice for hospitals or colleges then?
You argue that the poor have no choice in health care and lament that system, but with schools that’s ok somehow?
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Diane, you write: “This is the sector that Republican governors want to expand. Government contracts with minimal or no oversight. At-risk kids put even more at risk in the hands of vendors.” I think you should add that “this is the sector that this Democratic administration wants to expand”.
My Missouri Democratic governor is supportive of some of these same school “choice” mandates. These are ideas driven by Democratic mayors as well….Rahm Emanuel comes to mind. I just wish more attention was given to the bipartisan nature of these “reforms”.
The Secretary of Education is supportive of these reforms. Why aren’t Obama and Duncan ultimately held accountable for the blueprint? Is it because much of this was driven by the NGA? If that is the theory, the Democratic administration could have quashed it. Instead, it has embraced it.
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I have not been shy in criticizing Obama and Duncan for embracing the GOP agenda of testing, accountability and choice. It’s a bipartisan consensus and it’s doing incalculable damage to education.
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‘Then you would support elimination of choice for hospitals or colleges then?’
This illusion of choice is the driver of this marketisation of public services. No, I don’t want a choice of school or hospital – I want to know that the school and hospital in my neighbourhood are excellent. Having a choice between poor providers is no choice. Having a dozen excellent schools or hospitals which I cannot afford to travel to is no choice.
How does paying for profits and shareholder dividends, for marketing and promotion help services concentrate scarce resources on getting the job done? How does undermining co-operative learning between institutions support all to be excellent?
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It does not. That’s the point. Not all institutions are excellent. I suspect you don’t want a choice in hospitals until you are sick, then at that point, I’m pretty sure you would pick the best hospital for your needs, regardless of location. I’m pretty sure you’d want the worst hospitals, with the highest infection rates, closed. And those hospitals would close if nobody chose to patronize them. With schools there is no such choice, they are all but guaranteed a student population. (and in increasing one at that, such that, they have no clue how to downsize)
I’d hazard to guess you know which colleges are best in their fields, is that because they ‘market?’ When is the last time you saw an ad for MIT? I can bet people in NYC know which public high school is the most prestigious as well, and it’s not because they air commercials. Those schools which spend money ‘marketing’ and paying ‘dividends’ do so at their own peril. When their product suffers, they will erode their customer base, and they will dissappear, no?
Yes, in uptopian world, ALL schools, ALL hospitals, and ALL colleges would be excellent. There would be no laws against monopolies, because those companies would provide excellent service and value regardless of the lack of competition… or would they?
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It’s not consumer choice that closes poor hospitals and schools or fosters good ones, it is accountability, regulation, monitoring and support. How many children have to fail in a poor school, how many patients have to suffer in a poor hospital before ‘the market’ causes it to close? Several years’ worth. A good, well managed, local inspection and support mechanism can respond instantly. You might dismiss excellence for all as merely a Utopian dream, I know it is possible and am working hard to make it a reality.
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Exactly, Camden High in NJ is failing 50% of its students with no end in sight. How many more students must it fail before it’s closed? Do you think it will improve next year? Do you think any plan you can provide will fix it next year? I can tell you it’s been failing in that fashion for some time now, maybe 5 years. It’s that long enough? When is it time to say to provide a mechanism to close the school? How many years of children must fail? The market acting late to close a school is better than keeping it open indefinitely, no?
I’ve read widespread opposition to ‘parent trigger’ laws, or as I understand them, popular votes to close schools. But here in NJ we have those same people demanding popular votes to authorize charter schools in their districts. (which I support) But I don’t see how we believe our people are smart enough that we can trust them to vote against opening a charter school, but dumb enough that we don’t trust them to keep public schools open. Shouldn’t those votes go hand in hand?
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