Maureen Reedy, who taught in the public schools of Ohio for 29 years, is running for the State Legislature.
I wrote a post about her in mid-July, but that was a long time ago. So it is time to remind you that she is well-qualified, she follows the money, and she intends to support our public schools in a state where the governor and the Legislature are hell-bent on privatization.
I am grateful to a reader for alerting me to the work of Dr. Teresa Thayer Snyder, who is the superintendent of schools in Voorheesville, New York.
She is a hero of public education.
What makes her a hero? She speaks out clearly and fearlessly about children and education. She explains the work of the schools to parents and the community. She is patient and clear, not bombastic or defensive. She is wise and she shares her wisdom.
By telling the truth about teaching and learning and child development, she is a rebuke to the zany, unproven schemes of the “reform” movement.
These days, telling the truth is powerful.
Yesterday I was on an NPR program interviewed by Michel Martin. I followed Arne Duncan, Margaret Spellings, Michelle Rhee, and Alberto Carvalho, the Miami superintendent.
Duncan said that Race to the Top did not require teaching to the test. Spellings praised NCLB.
Carvalho explained why he tried to help schools get better instead of closing them down. He said in several cases, he replaced the principal and made other changes, and the school improved.
Rhee took exception. She said that leaders should not tolerate failing schools. And she used this odd metaphor. She said–and I paraphrase–“if you take 10 shirts to a dry cleaner, and they scorch seven of them, why would you go back to that cleaners?”
So a school is like a dry cleaners, and children are like shirts. Teachers scorch the shirts.
Last month, at the GOP convention, Jeb Bush said that choosing schools was like buying milk. Some people like whole milk, some prefer 2% or 1%, or buttermilk or chocolate milk.
What metaphor will we hear next? The school is like a car-wash where the parents pick up their kids at the end of the line? Who makes up these silly lines? Is it some high-priced PR firm?
Being last, I had to try my best to set the record straight. So much to do, so little time.
A reader shared his response to the article praising the profit motive in education.
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.
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.
A reader sent the list of contributors to the campaign for 1240 in Washington State, which authorizes charters. See here and here for more about 1240.
Please read the list. Not clear if anyone on it is a parent of a public school student. What you will see is a list of billionaires in the high-tech sector.
Will big money buy the referendum?
Is public education for sale to the billionaire boys’ club?
Help your friends fight off the charter billionaires in Washington State.
Tomorrow is Money Blast Day:
It’s here – Money Blast Day in Washington state to fight off I-1240 that would establish charter schools here. (Washington is one of just nine states that does not have them and we have voted – three times – and said no to charters.)
But Bill Gates and his wealthy friends just infused the Yes side to the tune of $3M (they are up over $8M total). It’s a David and Goliath fight that we intend to win but we need help.
The No On 1240 campaign is having a MONEY BLAST all day on October 11th to raise money for this fight that has national implications. We have an angel donor that will match the first 50 people who donate $100.
Please help us draw this line in the sand against charters, their poor outcomes, their bad ramifications and the insanity that is the “conversion/trigger” charter embedded in I-1240. (This would allow a charter to use a petition signed by parents OR teachers to take over ANY existing school, failing or not. It would be the harshest conversion charter trigger in the country.)
Please help us say NO to charters and NO to I-1240.
Bill Gates just added another $2 million, and Alice Walton of the Walmart family just dropped another $1 million.
I am donating $100. Will you donate whatever you can?
Louisiana passed its historic privatization legislation last spring, which included not only vouchers for more than half the students in the state, but inducement for many organizations to open multiple charter schools.
Now the state is getting swamped with applications from unknown or little-known groups. Maybe it is your Uncle Harry and Aunt Mabel. Maybe it is the guy who usually runs a hardware store. Maybe it is a dentist and his friends. Are they qualified to run schools?
Who knows?
People in public schools call them “pop-up charters” because they materialized out of nowhere to grab some funding away from the public schools. Yes, that. Every charter that opens, no matter how unqualified its founders or inexperienced its teachers, takes money away from the minimum foundation funding fo the state’s public schools. Once they get set up and operating, there is no one to hold them accountable. Accountability is only for public schools.
This is a money grab, plain and simple. And call it what is is: privatization.
Please look over this list and see if you ever heard of any of these would-be charter operators.
Frankly it seems that Bobby Jindal and John White don’t care who sets themselves up in business and calls themselves a school, so long as they take money away from public schools.
Next week I am traveling and lecturing in the Midwest.
I speak at the City Club in Chicago on Monday October 15 at 7:30 am.
Same day, I speak to the CREATE assessment conference at University of Illinois at 11:30 a.m.
Same day, I speak to members of CTU at 4 pm, not yet sure of location.
Fly to Columbus, Ohio, that night.
On October 16 at 9:00 am I speak to the Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, Bridgewater Banquet Facility in Powell, Ohio.
I leave immediately after I speak and fly to Lansing, Michigan. On October 17, I speak to the Tri-County Alliance for Public Education, 8:30am.
Then I leave and fly to St. Paul, where I speak on October 18 to the annual conference of Education Minnesota at 11:30 am.
I dash to make a flight home.
Collapse.
I hope you can do this when you are 74!
Is your state or district planning to create a report card for its public schools?
Advice from New York City: Don’t.
Read this debate. You will see some past and former employees of the school system (and the head of the charter association) who believe in the grades. And you will read some eloquent and knowledgeable critics who know that the grades are erratic, meaningless, and serve no purpose other than to set schools up to be closed.
The city’s Department of Education decided some years ago that the way to improve schools was to grade them. Millions and millions have flown out the window as everyone evaluates everyone else.
And every year, schools learn whether they got labeled A, B, C, D or F.
And with or without grades, the failure continues. And the biggest failure of all is the grading system.
Diane Ravitch's blog 