This is the most revolting article I have ever provided a link to. It is written by some money-grubbing entrepreneur who boasts that for-profit businesses are necessary to provide the innovation that education needs.
His insult to my friend Anthony Cody sets the tone (the article originally had the subtitle “How I Kicked Anthony Cody’s Ass,” but it was changed by the editors as “playful” but “out of bounds”</).
Apparently this guy was annoyed when Cody had the nerve to challenge the Gates Foundation for facilitating the privatization of public education.
I say we need more teachers like Anthony Cody and fewer profit-seekers.
For-profit businesses are valuable for supplying goods and services but I have not seen any evidence that for-profits should run schools. Their bottom line is making a profit, not making good education. The way they make a profit is by cutting costs, and they do this by replacing experienced teachers with low-cost, inexperienced teachers, or replacing teachers with technology. They don’t ask whether it’s good for children or whether it improves education, but whether it increases the ROI (return on investment).
The entrepreneurs create these sham schools for other people’s children, not their own.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am curious about which goods and services for profit businesses are valuable for supplying and which they are not. Is there a principled way to distinguish between the two?
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For-profit companies are good at supplying paper, hardware, pens, pencils, software, desks, chairs, cleaning supplies, and trade books. Sometimes they provide good custodial services and bus service.
For-profits make truly awful textbooks and tests.
They should never be allowed to manage schools or instruction.
New York State outsources preschool special education to private firms; it is by far the most expensive in the nation. A recent state audit suggested it was inefficient, wasteful and corrupt.
Diane
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Hi Diane. I wrote the following reply to Tom Segal on their web page.
Eight years ago, I would have agreed with you on your perspective, Mr. Segal. Unfortunately, your efforts to paint the public education community as in dire need of the profit motive are profoundly misguided. I have spent the last 8 years teaching in public charters, which are nothing more than privatized public schools. My experience, and the data, show that they rarely perform any better and in 1/3 of the cases, perform worse than traditional public schools.
Your error lies in in your belief that the dynamics of a capitalistic market apply within the mandate of the public education sector. They simply do not. By law, schools must accept all students that walk through their doors. Name me one company that has that mandate. There simply isn’t one. A competitive market is based on choice. Choice by the vendor to offer the product and choice by the consumer to reject the product. At the end of the day, the vendor doesn’t have to sell to everyone and the consumer doesn’t have to buy anything (whether because they don’t want it or can’t afford it). In education, this is unacceptable. The entire basis of public education is anti-competitive by design, and with good reason. In competition, someone always loses out. When you are dealing with children, this is unacceptable. If education becomes for profit, we will end up with the same thing we have in health care–40 million people who are left with nothing while for profit care providers make enormous profits. For our country, this would be incredibly destructive.
There is also a huge difference between schools working with for profit vendors and schools themselves becoming for profit vendors. For profit vendors will do whatever it takes to maintain the highest profitability. Cut wages, eliminate less profitable products, close down entire production facilities, etc. This type of instability may work in a world where companies are dealing with widgets. However, introducing this type of volatility into the education world is extremely destructive. I have seen students suffer through the poor performance of their school, the subsequent closing, and their shuffling to yet another poorly performing school. This is not “market efficiency” that is necessary in education. It is instability introduced at the most vulnerable time in an adolescent’s life.
Lest you think that I’m simply ignorant of business, I should say that I earned an undergraduate integrative Business/Econ major and am currently earning my MBA. Over seven years ago, I charged into battle with the same cry of privatization and “for profit” motive you are espousing here. My direct experience showed me the folly of this type of thinking.
If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to earn your credential and go and teach in the public education classroom for at least five years. I don’t believe anyone who has not actually taught in the public school has any right to authoritatively criticize it, especially from a perspective as potentially detrimental as introducing for profit motives into public education. I find it remarkable that people who have no education experience act as though they know what’s best for the education profession itself. No other profession would tolerate this type of behavior. Imagine if I would presume to criticize the methods general practitioners use to treat their patients. Imagine if I presumed to suggest sweeping changes to the investment banking world, having no experience at all as an IB. Even worse, imagine if I not only criticized it, but had billions of dollars to begin altering those professions and their economic structures. Yes, the “Market” might push me out after I had failed, but at what cost was I proven a failure? How many lives did I affect negatively? What types of damage may have been irrevocably done?
Children are not test subjects for the mega wealthy and for venture capitalists. If someone wants to bring change and “reform” to public education, they should start by getting deep experience in the classroom to learn first hand what the real challenges are. No one who hasn’t paid their dues in the “trenches” as a Private has any right to presume to take the title of General and to lead an army.
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Hi Diane. I was wondering if we might chat some time. I wrote the reply to Tom Segal’s article that you sent out on your blog. In terms of charters, I am a “veteran” teacher. I also have experience in union representation for charters. I was a bargaining chair for 4 years, a site rep, and the Vice President of a 470 member union.
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I am looking for a way to distinguish between things that for profit companies are good at doing and things they are not good at doing. Why, for example, they might be fine in managing your healthcare or any legal issue you might have, but not education.
By textbooks I assume you do not mean works of literature. School would be a much poorer place if books published by for profit presses are banned from the school building.
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Read my book “The Language Police.” The literature textbooks are dreadful.
I said that for-profits are good at producing trade books. Do you know the difference?
Diane
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I think the interesting question here is why for profit presses are great at producing trade books and terrible at producing textbooks. What is the essential difference?
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Read “The Language Police.”
Diane
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The education market is prone to failure. Courts require legislators to pursue accountability at a distance. But parents want safe, happy children who get good grades (as distinct from a good education).
The economic literature addresses market where the consumer and payer are separate entities. They are generally failure prone.
Genuine education reform would find a way to merge the innovation, efficiencies, prioritization, problem-solving, and ethics of a truly good business with competent, caring educators and a supportive community.
Further reading:
Education Criteria for Performance Excellence
A Conspiracy of Good Intentions: America’s Textbook Fiasco (older and shorter than Language Police–but its sketch of the system is worth many thousands of words
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Eric,
I think we are in the process of figuring out genuine education reform, but we will make a number of mistakes along the way.
I would argue that the principal agent problem is the largest problem in education. Ideally we hire teachers to educate our children, but teachers have their own interests which may or may not be the education of children. Many posts on here, for example, argue that today teachers are not educating children, but rather teaching them how to take a test. Those posts argue that we have screwed up the incentive system for teachers so badly that they are not actually educating children anymore.
While principal agent problems occur all over the service economy, they are more likely to be a problem when the principal is stuck with an agent. If I believe my doctor is recommending treatments that are in the doctor’s best interest, I can change physicians. With a zoned school system, I can not do the same with schools.
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Dr Ravitch,
I have not had time to read the book, but I did read a review of it. That review claimed that you had three policy recommendations: eliminate the state level adoption process, let the public know what publishers, state agencies and the federal government are doing to educational materials, and have teachers that are masters of what they teach so textbooks need not be used. These all seem like very sensible suggestions, but I was surprised that eliminating textbooks produced by for profit presses was missing from the list. Did the reviewer miss this it?
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Since when can we say that private companies are in any way “good” at managing healthcare, or at least, in any way better than a public or non-for-profit enterprise?
Should for-profit companies manage the military and our elections as well? I wonder if you would make the argument that those functions should also be profit motivated?
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teachingeconomist,
Dr Ravitch is consumed playing whack-a-mole against sinister forces of privatization. While she stands by her earlier works, she has joined forces with those who reject them.
Supporters of E. D. Hirsch or the classic Ravitch are now being drowned out by partisans on both extremes.
Also lost is bipartisan support for the reforms of “new unionism.”
Economists could contribute constructively to both of those discussions (which aren’t happening, or at least aren’t relevant to political bases). NEA economists mostly seem to argue that funding smaller class sizes is a better investment than incentives to attract businesses and jobs. How should political economy inform model legislation affecting public education? NEA members dismiss efforts of lawyers, economists, organizational development specialists, etc. while paying for the same specialties in-house. The public education doomsday clock advances toward midnight…
I’ll start a new reply on this thread in hopes you will reply (and we get a full column width).
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For-profit vendors providing goods and services that have been selected by educators is fine, but that is very different from the role for-profit businesses seek in education today. Non-educators in for-profit businesses want to drive education policy and determine curricululm, instruction and assessment. They are no more qualified to do so than paper pushers at insurance companies are qualified to tell doctors what procedures to implement with their patients.
Having attended school makes no one an expert in education, just as having visited a doctor makes no one an expert in medicine.
Leave the primary tasks involved in impementing education and health care to skilled professionals, not lay people selling their attractively packaged snake oil that cuts costs in order to generate profits.
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What would you think about for profit education firms run by experienced educators?
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Those are called private schools. They do not drink from the public trough.
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Well what do you think of for profit charter firms run by experienced educators?
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Unfortunately, the carpet-bagging in assessment (and curriculum) publishing since NCLB extends to not-for-profits, some of which operate just like the for-profit corporations.
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Thanks, Cosmic, for clarifying why health care costs have skyrocketed, and why health care in America is in turmoil. And, as usual, the 99% is meant to suffer for this.
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Diane,
Perhaps you missed the content due to the perceived tone.
Segal argues “high-quality digital tools” will emerge from “the profit motive coupled with a truly transparent market filled with a multitude of options.”
Core Knowledge books wouldn’t exist without a similar profit motive (not the foundation, but the publisher, manufacturers, booksellers)
Segal offers a valuable explanation of how tech comes to market. The scary folks are the private equity behind charter schools.
Since NEA Today might not explain this distinction to NEA members, maybe philanthropists will fund Merle Hazzard to write “Teachers, Don’t Let Your Unions Grow Up to Lead Market Failures.”
But again, Segal argues the philanthropists distort the market to the disadvantage of teachers. (Hmmm, didn’t you agree with Segal when you suggested Gates not use his billions to become the national superintendent of schools?)
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Seal also condemns K12, a position that many here would agree with.
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Eric,
He’s Merle Haggard and he didn’t write the song of which you spoof (though I do agree with your sentiment). See wiki:
“‘Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys’ is a country music song first recorded by Ed Bruce, written by him and wife Patsy Bruce. His version of the song appears on his 1976 self-titled album for United Artists Records. In late 1975–early 1976, Bruce’s rendition of the song went to #15 on the Hot Country Singles charts.”
Waylon and Willie sang the version that most people are familiar with and that reached #1 on Billboard’s “Hot Country Singles” in 1978.
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Yes, but Merle Hazard might indeed spoof the Ed Bruce/Waylon/Willie song.
That aside, the real problem is NEA “friends of education” who can’t collectively address concerns from the United Nations International Committee for the Elimination of all forms of Racial discrimination. Diane Ravitch know Secretary Clinton’s Universal Periodic Review submission is bogus. But that’s not a conversation the two NEA friends of education seem willing to have.
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Thanks for the link!! Hadn’t heard about the Hazzard before.
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The discussion here is getting to the heart of an important issue, which is where the boundary should lie between the private and the public spheres. From a UK perspective the real problem is the private companies using ALEC to influence public policy, and the unmodified spread of private sector management techniques into education generally (dodgy performance management techniques, dodgy use of data to support decision making, though neither mean that performance management or use of data to support decision-making are bad in themselves); but Segal is right to assert that it is in the private sector that technology innovation occurs, though he should not be silent (and he is) on the enormous impact – financial and intellectual – of the public sphere (defence, academia, basic research etc) on private companies’ innovation. Also, I agree with Eric that Segal makes an important point about the distorting influence of foundation/philanthropic spending.
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I agree that this is the core issue in this debate. The boundary need not be all of one thing or another. It might be that a heavily regulated private market in schools is the best answer.
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To understand the failiure of the profit motive in public services, you only have to look to the Post Office. People can complain all they want about how awful, inefficient, rude, whatever the Post Office is, but the reality is that no private company is going to deliver a letter to Nowhere, North Dakota for 45 cents. If the Post Office were ever fully privatized, people in distant rural areas could expect to pay ten times as much for mail service as people in urban areas. So far, thankfully, our country has found that unacceptable.
Similarly, if education were ever fully privatized, quality education for kids with special needs would only be available at much higher costs (borne by the parents most likely). Again, thankfully, so far at least, our country has found that unacceptable.
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You are exactly correct about the USPS. It was given a monopoly over first class mail delivery so that revenue from inexpensive local mail in cities would subsidize more expensive long distance delivery and rural delivery.
An alternative would be to subsidize private companies. That is what the FCC is doing with broadband internet service in rural areas. I suppose we could have just given the post office a monopoly on providing Internet access.
Here is an article on the subsidy:http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/business/fcc-offers-subsidies-to-improve-internet-mobile-service-in-rural-areas-1.1366763
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The FCC policy is a second-best solution given the political unwillingness of the public to provide such service through public works, similar to the initial electrification of rural areas.
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You might be right that having the Post Office do it would have been a better option.
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Diane, I read this on Cody’s page and I agree, it is the most offensive piece I have read about private entrerprise. Currently in Atlanta, one of the flagship schools that has the oldest IB program in the SEast had a hostile ‘takeover’ of administration and the Superintendent use AYP first as an excuse and then shunted into VAM as an excuse for why this bloodless coup ( as reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitutional). This bloodless coup has a mixed group of parents who are poor, middle and very upper middle class parents who are all invested in public ed up at arms. I raise this as this is happening just three week or so before the ballot initiative for or against charter schools is coming up for yet its third vote before the electorate. One of Board of Ed members was a key note speaker for the Milliken Foundation the foundation has plunged full bore into profit driven education in Florida is now trying to crack open Georgia for all that it has.
It all smells here in the land of peaches but treating teachers and students and parents as if they were just pawns of the market place is revolting. This writer of this piece has no place near education.
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Sorry, haste makes for poor proof reading or no proof reading as this case demonstrates. Atlanta Board of Education has as its head of the Board of Education a financial investor who has been a keynote speaker for Milliken who is now in the business of plucking the public coffers dry with the worst excuse of a privatized education system. This is coupled with a Superintendent that has openly used and misused educational ‘data’ VAM in particular to create hostility in an environment that was not perfect but was growing in leaps in bounds and was a home for parents and students to learn and grow. The timing of this disruption to this particular schoool is aimed to those who will take their wealth and their votes to the polls in November and is now the push to allow carpet bagging privatizers win. Has the South not learned anything from history. There were always some who sold out to the carpet baggers and there always some who acted to keep the races apart and now privatizers have given the green light to do both at once.
Privatizers have done a lovely job with the financial market and now they are coming for the kids,
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Above, I ask: “How should political economy inform model legislation affecting public education?”
Some resources (which ought to promote productive dialogue):
https://www.google.com/search?q=strauss+%22school+judgment+rule%22
NEA’s new unionism in pursuit of quality, Ruben Cedeno (2000): “The ongoing demands for greater accountability and higher standards are prompting America’s public schools to change the way they do business. … Phrases such as collaborative decision making, end users, research-based, strategic planning, and systems thinking dominate educational jargon.”
New Directions for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Schools, Robert M. Carini (2008): “Research on the implications of collective bargaining in schools has been sluggish in its progress over the past two decades … there has been myopic focus on student outcomes to the neglect of how bargaining shapes schools as workplaces.”
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Left out a quote (cf NEA goals, below):
Horace Mann (1848): “That political economy, therefore, which busies itself about capital and labor, supply and demand, interests and rents, favorable and unfavorable balances of trade, but leaves out of account the elements of a wide-spread mental development, is naught but stupendous folly. The greatest of all the arts in political economy is to change a consumer into a producer; and the next greatest is to increase the producing power,–and this to be directly obtained by increasing his intelligence.”
NEA et al (2007): “compelling governmental interest in educating all of our children to function effectively in a multiracial, democratic society and realize their full intellectual and academic potential.”
NEA et al (2012): The sum of the matter is this: if we are to “hasten the day when ‘we are just one race,'” … we must ensure that our children are educated in the racially diverse settings that produce significant societal and educational benefits. … fully justified … by society’s compelling interest in the education of all of its children.
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I have posted my own reply to Tom Segal’s unfortunately titled essay: “Confronting the Free Marketeers: Will They Plow Through Us?” http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/10/confronting_the_free_marketeer.html
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Tom Segal ‘s article is repulsive. He likens our precious students to cars, medical products, and computers. The whole privitization movement is disgustingly dehumanizing.
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I think you misread the article. He is comparing schools to cars, medical products and computers, not students. The students are the ones who have a choice about not buying the poorly produced car. As the former owner of a chevy corvair, it is a position I can appreciate.
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I do not believe that I misread the article. The corporate reformers will not be affecting schools but will directly affect students … people … human beings.
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So if students have a choice about schools (technically their parents) then what happens if the choice is a bad one? It’s not like they can take their education back and get a refund or substiture (like a poorly produced car). They have to live with it for it the rest of their life. They may make a luckier/better choice for their next school but their “failure” may limit where they can go next.
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mpledger
The same would be true if their public school is a bad one and they have no ability to choose a different school. A bad education is a bad education, no matter if it is one proved by a charter school or a zoned public school.
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argh, provided, not proved.
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The whole privitization movement is disgustingly dehumanizing.
Segal isn’t discussing privatization. He’s discussing ed tech, specifically “high-quality digital tools.” My read is “the profit motive coupled with a truly transparent market filled with a multitude of options” means a market that serves classrooms–teachers and students–with “high-quality digital tools.” He states, “The single greatest innovation in education in our lifetime has been the opportunity created to leverage computers, tablets, and smartphones …” and urges buyer beware. The future hurdles he notes have nothing to do with privatization, but with modernizing classrooms: “increasing transparency in the sales process, educating administrations and teachers on proper use and implementation of new tools, and flooding the marketplace with a multitude of viable options.”
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The corporate digital push is often coupled with privitization. Digital tools are given a status that marginalize the incredible importance of a teacher educating students in real time, face to face. I use computers as a tool daily and I know how limited they actually are, Technology tools simply cannot match the educational effects of a skilled teacher.
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The digital push is important out here in the middle of the country where skilled teachers are sometimes difficult to find. Some school districts in my state have only one high school science teacher in the district. This does not allow the students in those districts the ability to realize their full intellectual potential in the public school system.
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Hi Diane. I finally wrote my response to Segal’s article today
http://hackeducation.com/2012/10/11/profits-and-lies/
I take issue with his distortion of the history of technology, as well as his argument that innovation in education comes from profits — an assertion that certainly overlooks the agency and innovation of any teacher or student.
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I wanted to stop reading the article after this statement: “You can’t have high-quality digital tools without the profit motive”.
Not true at all. Open Office is a great example of high quality software with no profit motive. There are many others.
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