This comment from a Puget Sound parent hits the nail on the head about both the strategy and goal of corporate reform. First, create dissatisfaction, then turn us into shoppers, choosing a school while destroying our attachment to our community schools. In time, we discover that it is the school that chooses, not the shopper.
One of the objectives of the privatizers is to reinforce the “Mall Mentality” that so many of us just act on, unconsciously. The entire goal is to get us to see education as a “product” to “choose”—like we would with a new pair of sandals at a giant retailer.
What’s MY “return on investment” for MY kid? How come I’m paying for YOU, “teacher”, and I can’t just “can you, like my boss can can ME, anytime, for any reason?”. What am I getting for MY money?”
And the reason that the privatizers are trying to drill this into us with words like “choice” and “investment” and “accountability” is that they realize that community, cooperation and mutual support are CRITICAL if a public school is to survive, let alone thrive.
Privatizers WANT people to be suspicious of the people running their schools and ultra-competitive with each other. They want people looking for advantage and focused exclusively on self-interest, resulting in an obsession with “MY KID!”—and implicitly “NOT YOUR KID!”
Privatizers live for the image of parents bickering, breaking into factions, and running for the exits after they maliciously pay someone to yell “FIRE!” in the equivalent of a very crowded theatre.
Like the crowd during the bank run in “It’s A Wonderful Life”, will we panic and sell out to Potter, “for at least HALF of MY MONEY” or will we stick together, realizing that our strength comes from standing WITH one another, united for ALL of “OUR KIDS”?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No this is how to PLAN an economy. If you really oppose all of this, why are you NOT working towards returning power to the people instead of the political elitists?? Abolish the US DOE. The Feds have WAY TOO much control. The COnstitution LIMITS the Feds and yet we see unions and progressives continually hand power to the Feds. It could be our retirement, healthcare or education. When you give the Feds this kind of power, they will USE it against you. How many times do we have to go through this before people figure this out.
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Well, I’m the author of that post—thank you for the acknowledgement, Diane—and perhaps I need to clarify some things here.
I agree with you, “MOMwithAbrain”, that the federal Department of Education is doing terrible things. I oppose the way they are using federal funds as “carrots” to pressure local schools districts to comply with absolutely awful policies.
And you’re absolutely right: The Federal DOE has no business interfering with local control of our schools. There might be a very good argument for abolishing it altogether—but I’ve reached no firm conclusion on that question yet.
I’m not sure what you’re describing or who you’re talking about when you speak about “continually handing over power to the feds.” That’s not my position, nor is it the position of anyone I know who is fighting against the efforts of the DOE to help privatize our schools.
I don’t think we’re enemies here—people like you and me—I think rather, that we’re allies. Or should be soon. What do you think?
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Do you think federal courts have any business interfering with local control of your school?
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Glad to hear Puget Sound parent is in favor of choices within a district. we agree about that. Washington state also has the Running Start program that allows high school kids to take courses at public universities, with tax funds following them. I think it’s a good idea too (we have a similar program in Minnesota, called Post-Secondary Options). that’s allowed more than 100,000 students to take courses on college campuses. It’s help encourage many school districts to establish new Advanced Placement, Int’l Bac and “Dual Enrollment” courses.
Also, when Diane says that she does not want public funds to promote what she calls either voluntary or coerced segregation. When will we see articles or columns from Diane that criticize suburban public schools that in some cases are 90% or more white and less than 10% low income?
The largest school choice program in this country is called “suburbs”. Suburban parents are allowed to deduct from their taxable income their (often high) real estate taxes, and interest on their often expensive homes. I’ve visited suburban districts where the average teacher teacher earned more than $65K a year but could not afford to live inthe district (think north shore of Long Island, for example).
If the government does not help create public school options for low, moderate income families, than only affluent families will have publicly supported options. Is that what you would like? Options for the wealthy, all low income families forced to attend only a neighborhood school? (That’s not what low income and families want, according to numerous surveys).
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In 1970, a group of mothers in St. Paul, Minnesota convinced the local school board that there should be a k-12 public “open” school. It would feature a site council, combine classroom work with community service, begin each year with a family/advisor/student conference, and use the whole continent as a place to learn. Critics used some of the same arguments as Dr. R to oppose it. But many young people who had not succeeded in traditional schools did very well in this school. Some teachers who had been frustrated in traditional schools loved working in this school. Some families loved the idea of one school where all their children, ages 5-18, could attend. Other families and educators preferred different approaches.
The creation of this option led to other options within the district…Montessori, Core Knowledge, Spanish Immersion, etc.
There is another way to look at providing public school options that the almost daily (and sometimes several times a day) attack that I read here. That is, that we will have more students who are successful, more educators who are able to carry out their dreams, and more involved families when we provide high quality options. Of course, not all options are great. It’s possible to have a good idea and to implement it badly. But for some of us as educators and parents like the idea of providing options within public education.
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Would you send your child or grandchild to a Rocketship charter or a charter chain with: militaristic test prep, follow our culture rules, don’t talk, SLANT, sit in front of a computer for hours, practice filling in bubbles, tuck in your shirt, pay a fine “scholar” mentality?
Because evidently that is the ONLY “choice” some city parents have, so it is survival of the fittest, help who we can, abuse who we can, make a buck, fool the
public, etc.
It appears the more they talk about “choice”, the less choices you have. Ironic, huh?
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Linda, I heard a New Orleans parent complain that the new choice system had two consequences:
1. Schools choose, not students or families
2. The one choice that does not exist is a neighborhood public school.
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Therefore, for the poor in the cities, it has worked as planned.
I think the “choice” word is now a lie.
Antonyms for choice: disadvantage, drawback, handicap, hindrance, loss, obstacle, restriction
Reform = Privatization
Choice = Obstacle, loss
We need to start a reformy dictionary….Edushyster….we need you!
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Why not just strengthen all public schools?
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Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Here are a few responses. To reading exchange…is it possible for a school to simultaneously be Montessori, Spanish Immersion, Chinese Immersion, Core Knowledge and “open”? Offering distinctive high quality options is one way to help more youngsters succeed. We found this in Cincinnati, where neighborhood high schools created small schools in large buildings (in cooperation with the Cincy Federation of TEachers, which was a strong ally), as part of an overall effort that eliminated the graduation gap between white and AFrican Amer students.
In response to the Chicago teacher…your district also offers elite “magnet” schools in which the vast majority of students are not allowed to enroll, and which have huge waiting lists. I’m strongly opposed to public schools, district or charter, being allowed to use admissions tests. I’ve raised this issue with Dr. R before but so far she seems ok with district schools using admissions tests. I’m not. I don’t know the details of the charter in the neighborhood you describe. I recently wrote an published essay praising Chicago Public Schools for allowing groups of teachers and parents to create various options in a new high school on the West Side. Perhaps you know of it.
To David L – I don’t think “the market” solves all problems. For a number of progressive educators, carefully developed school choice programs are a part, but only part of an overall agenda that includes, for example, expanding high quality early childhood programs, for ages 3-7. There is great research on Chicago Parent/Child Centers on this point from Professor Art Reynolds and Judy Temple. I think we agree that the market does not solve all problems. In fact, unregulated markets create more problems than they solve.
I’ll be spending much of the day with our children and grandchildren but will be interested in comments during the day and will respond to others tonight.
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Racial segregation, whether coerced or voluntary, should not be subsidized with public funds.
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Public funds support segregation in public schools through the drawing of district
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Joe, since the 1970’s this has been happening. And I’m all for a variety of school options within, and among, local school districts.
But none of these innovations happened outside of the public school district. It’s been proven for several decades, all over the country, that within our public school communities, parents and citizens can, and DO, create and sustain innovative, alternative education options.
However, what’s been happening in the last few years is a deliberate effort to use this general, nice-sounding concept of “choice” to undermine public education and to find a way…gradually…over time…to make citizens distrust each other, and all community institutions—paving the way for an eventual phasing out of public education.
Make no mistake: the entire rise of the Privatization Industry is premised upon their expectation of a “Steady Flow of Taxpayer Dollars” for education; the goal of the Privatizers is to find a way, over time, to get 100% of that funding into private hands.
They see education as yet another “market” OR “investment vehicle”. And as the owner of a business, I can see clearly what they’re doing.
When it ALL becomes about “the money”, in private hands, there’s two things that have to happen: Reduce Costs and Increase Revenues.
For Privatizers, teachers are “overhead”; classrooms and learning materials are “overhead”; even physical buildings themselves are “overhead”. And, as every CFO will tell you, “Overhead must always be minimized—or even eliminated—if you want more money to go into the pockets of your executives and key investors.
So, you tell me: If private interests are allowed to gradually slip into our schools and take them over, why would they NOT want to reduce “overhead” to an absolute minimum? What incentives would exist to do otherwise?
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Private interests entered public schools many years ago. They sell lots of products and services. Some are great. Some are awful. Yes, companies need to be monitored carefully. That goes for any company selling things to individuals or to government.
In the charter sector, there have been some terrible companies – some of us have fought hard and successfully against them.
I don’t think private companies should ever be allowed to sell anything without public monitoring. Same, by the way, is true of district public schools. We’ve certainly had examples of financial scandals in teacher unions, in school districts. Where there are public funds, there is a vital need for scrutiny.
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There are a lot of public urban districts who offered different types of high schools for different learning paths. Unfortunately, those districts are being weakened and ruined by charter schools. They charter highs do not offer any specialized programs because the CEOs need to make profits. Also, there are public magnets. The vast majority of high school students want to attend these schools. The charters are a default choice. Students will attend these schools if they are near their homes. The lowest performing public schools have been turned into dumping grounds. They contain kids from the roughest areas of the city. Your description about graduation rates doesn’t impress me. Excuse my cynicism, but I’ve been in schools where teachers are forced to pass students so the charter “cash cow” will be kept alive.
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This is the religion of modern economics–Everything (and everyone) can be bought and sold in a market, and the market price is always “right”, i.e., the market knows all and sees all. Take a look at Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market to read about the history of this insanity that now plagues the entire globe. The contribution of our best universities to this nonsense is just stunning. How we continue to advance the most irrational–even psychopathic–individuals through business and academia is enough to make one cry. Sometime I think we’ll have to rebuild education from the ground up to fix this mess.
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I spend a good deal of time in the economics classes I teach talking about how prices can go wrong and the kinds of goods that can not be bought and sold and other goods that should not be bought and sold.
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Tell that to Eugene Fama.
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I will if you explain to Joe Stglitz that he believes the market price is always right.
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In Chicago, the public elementary school where I teach continues to serve the entire community. To begin this new year, our school offers GED, ESL & computer classes to all adults in the community who wish to enroll – free of charge of course. Who comes to greet me in my classroom? The parents of former students who have enrolled their children in the brand new charter school down the block! One parent explained to me that she had chosen the charter because “the eighth grade girls at our school wear their pants too tight.” Another said that her son was constantly in trouble at the charter because he talks too much. Word is that the charter school has enrolled a few of our students who have IEPs and these children sit in regular classrooms all day and receive no special assistance. I can’t imagine that the situation is any different in other places.
I feel fortunate to work in a public school that strives to meet the needs of our entire community. Even though we appeared on the long list of Rahm’s chopping block, we continue to do what we know is right. We must.
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Wal-Mart controls the data. They determine now what factories make, at what price, and therefore, what any consumer has a choice of buying (if one shops there…which research shows over 80% of Americans do at one time or another.) Same thing is happening with our school system. Why do you think the Walton Foundation is so eager to invest millions in education deform?
The parallels between “Is WalMart Good for America” done on PBS and today’s education deform are eerie.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/
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http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/urban-educations-breadline-problem
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I was 18 in ’78 when Prop 13 happened in CA. There has been a staggering opportunity for decades which has been completely blown by the good-goodies and by their politically incompetent leaders. The opportunity has been purposely ignored and by the yuppie sell venal leaders of the goody goodies. (The DLC, BLue Dog, New Dem Turd way sell outs.)
FIRST – get over it !! people are selfish and lazy, too often. isms which require our better angels for the ism to work – those isms ain’t gonna work. END OF LESSON.
data is part of life, and, get over it. we plant the rice, wheat, lentils, soybeans … at the right place and the right time, we do the right things to the plants, we harvest and store and process the right way – OR WE F’KING STARVE. life isn’t a freaking teletubby show.
WHERE is the data on the costs of selfishness?
At some point in our selfish stupidity, it isn’t safe anywhere to have your friends and family over for the BBQ without a private army guarding the BBQ attendees. (whether the BBQ is to celebrate NASCAR, NFL, Passover, Easter, Ramadan, Year of The Snake, Vishnu, Venus… that is business of you, your friends and your family.)
Hundreds of millions of dollars a year get spent by the Democratic Party and by goody goody orgs on their “leaders”, and few of them do the research on the costs of selfishness, and too few are figuring out how to market how stupid selfishness is embarrassingly stupid and socially unacceptable. BUT, we keep sending them money cuz if we don’t, the mean meanies who are mean will be mean!!!
We SHOULD treat life like a mall – and let’s stop buying incompetent leaders!
rmm.
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I agree with almost all of what you’re saying, sans the parts that appear to be the result of some extreme anger and cynicism, however justified it might be.
I think we HAVE to retain some hope and vision for a better future if there ever is to be one.
Here’s one suggestion and I mean this sincerely. You wrote: “WHERE is the data on the costs of selfishness?”
Excellent question. What is stopping YOU from being one of the people that can help provide that data?
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We haven’t run into each other out here in Wishy-Warshy, Pacified Northwest, have we? I have no problem with you having discomfort with my style of expression, however “extreme anger and cynicism” is an Orwellian label used by the go along get alongs to quash speech which rattles the go along get alongs.
In the Democratic Party, calling thieving liars what they are is forbidden in the leafy dilettante ‘hoods cuz too many of the liars are neighbors. What has playing by dilettante rules accomplished for the bottom 99% in the last 3 decades?
This comment of mine is not a bio – and in real life I’ve been busy busy busy in that cut throat job market for 4 decades making sure I do a good job because I think everyone should try to do a good job, and because the more skills I have the less likely I’ll be back on welfare, as I was during the 70’s when I was a teenager.
I haven’t been saving the world because saving myself wipes me out. I haven’t changed careers while mummy & gramps funded dalliances #3, 13, and 23, I did it with mountains of debt and by wiping out piddly savings and by dancing on the threads of the shredded ‘safety net’.
What is ‘stopping’ me from saving the world are the same things stopping 80 or 90% of us – it is called time and money.
I do have a little time and a little money, and that little I’m devoting to getting rid of “leaders” who don’t do their jobs. IF you want to do their jobs, which they’re well paid for, who is paying your bills?
rmm
seattle, ex 36th l.d. iconoclast.
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Given widespread cutbacks in state aid to public universities, leading to tuition increases greatly in excess of inflation, coupled with the “everyone must go to college” mantra, we are looking at the creation of highly-indebted – with student loan debt that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy – consumers at the very beginning of their adult lives.
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Reminds me of the lines from the old song, “Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the company store.”
The old norm, the new norm.
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The college debt is staggering. High school students need extreme guidance about what kind of debt they might incur earning that B.A. in Communications from the party school in a sunshine state.
Parents are raiding their retirement accounts to pay their kids’ college loans. Not good.
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Cheryl,
It might comfort you to know that slightly over half of the graduates from my university have no debt when they graduate. The figure usually quoted in the press is the average debt for students that have debt, not the average debt over all students.
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Reading this post, i was reminded of these remarks by the
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison at fundraiser for my congressman, Rush
Holt. These are courtesy of Andrew Tobias’s blog: “When I was young
we used to be called citizens—American citizens. Some of us
were called ‘second class’ citizens, yet the term, the category,
the aspiration was citizenship. Some time after the end of World
War II another definition of Americans arose — ‘consumers.’
Every narrative, advertisement, political promise was to, for and
about the powerful, courted and always obeyed American
Consumer. So we did—consume. Happily,
extravagantly, mindlessly—until the credit card, the mortgaged home
or homes, the college tuition loans came due. Now the category has
changed again. We are now simply taxpayers or not-taxpayers.
Think of the difference, the cognitive and emotional difference
between thinking of oneself as a citizen and regarding oneself as
merely a taxpayer. If I am simply an American taxpayer, I am
alarmed about where my money goes; I may even resent the recipient,
wonder whether he or she or it (the institution) is worthy of my
money. On the other hand, if I am principally an American citizen,
I have to wonder about what’s best for my country, my state, my
neighbors, the young, the elderly and the unfortunate. That shift
in national identity informs so much of the discourse and the
political choices of our representatives. Obviously, I prefer
the label ‘citizen,’ which is precisely why I admire Rush
Holt. To me his works, his advocacy, his personal and
political philosophy stem from the concept of citizenship and what
it demands of us. From education to healthcare, to women’s
rights, civil rights, support for artists—his concerns and labor
are those of a citizen for citizens. And that commitment is
rare these days. If you help him, support him, with your resources
and your own enthusiastic commitment, you will be a champion for
that ancient and blessed definition: Citizen.”
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To me this is a another part of the right extreme political party to divide this country into the haves and have nots. These actions are part of the principal of the “virtue of selfishness.” I agree this is not about improving the education of ALL children.
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Public schools are designed to being a community together. Public schools are designed to help create an informed citizenry. Public education, like all public sector institutions, is not a business, and it is not in the business of “customer service” and all of that other repellent hogwash peddled by privatizers.
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Schools do not serve their students?
I think you draw too large a distinction between what governments do and what private organizations do. In the ally behind my house there is a bin for trash and a bin for recyclables. One is collected by a private company for which I pay a modest fee, the other is collected by my local government, for which I pay local taxes. Can you tell me which Ione is private and which public? Explain why one ,just be public but the other private?
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Yes, schools serve students but not the way a business serves its customers. As @tkq pointed out, the language we use to describe a system defines the way we view it.
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Business treat customers in a wide variety of ways. Your relationship with your grocery store, with your lawyer, and with your physician are all business relationships of different kinds. Phillips Exeter and Sidwell Friends seem to do a good job educating students despite being private organizations.
I certainly think the language is very important, and that is why I always point out that traditional zoned public schools have very strict admission standards defined by geography.
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Our students are neither “recyclables” or “trash”; at least most people I know don’t think of them that way. I can’t imagine you would either.
While I’m generally okay with schools purchasing supplies or food or LCD’s from a private entity—what’s the alternative?—I’m NOT okay with private organizations using this historic and logical relationship to shove in the Trojan Horse/Scam/Con Game of Privatization, under the guise of “closing the achievement gap” or “turning around failing schools” or “continuing the Civil Rights movement”. (The last one is a particularly shameful and egregious exploitation of our country’s historic and continuing struggle against racial injustice and economic inequality.)
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I never said children were recyclables or trash, but it was a good rhetorical effort, I was responding to susannunes who drew a bright line between anything government does and anything private organizations do. That line does not exist in my ally.
I am an advocate of choice and better matching of students to schools, so if the public school system is willing to provide a variety of school settings and allow students to attend whichever one fits their individual educational requirements and need the best, that seems to me to be a good solution. Most who post here argue against allowing any choice outside the building, though I suspect most would grudgingly admit that choice within the school building might be justified.
In the fall of his senior year in high school my son took two math courses and a chemistry course at a university, on online AP US Government course through a public school district 80 miles away (but actually subcontracted to K12 with a teacher on the east coast), and a couple of courses actually in the school building he was assigned to attend. I think that deconstruction of the traditional high school education is probably the best way to give each student an education that better reflects their needs.
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“In time, we discover that it is the school that chooses, not the shopper.” Wow.
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Somewhere over the past fifty years, the rhetoric has changed. As a child in the fifties, I don’t remember anyone other than my parents being overly interested in meeting my individual needs. The school provided a set of expectations for each grade level, and I was expected to learn what they taught. It wasn’t about just me, and I didn’t have a feeling that anyone owed me anything. When I was in jr. high, my family moved. I was quite sick during those first months and missed a lot of school. My main English and social studies teacher thought I was a hypochondriac and made me take a test on the Constitution unit I had missed after only a weekend to study. I went home and studied for seventeen hours and passed it with an A. I didn’t know she thought I was a faker, but I didn’t question her decision or complain to my parents. It was only later at a parent-teacher conference when she implied that I was a malingerer that my parents told her I had had double pneumonia. I grew up thinking the teacher was always right and expecting that my parents would support the school. Kids didn’t get in trouble if they could help it because the punishment at home was worse than anything you faced at school. I don’t support the teacher as God model, but today’s paradigm is denigrating and abusive.
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You are certainly not too old to teach.
Gone are the days when children are afraid to misbehave at school. It’s all the school’s fault.
We sure did not think that the school was there to meet our needs. We were all there to learn and we’d better do it.
It was good.
Everyone learned.
What happened?
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They tried to make health care a shopping experience as well, and during the Reagan years, nurses like me were supposed to call our patients “customers,” but we refused, and spoke up against that. Not every experience can be reduced to consumerism.
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Mary Beth, not sure where you work. But in many cities, employees have had for years an option to select among different health plans. The St. Paul Teachers union some years ago proposed (and the district agreed) to a “cafeteria” approach in which the district allocated a certain number of dollars for fringe benefits, and teachers could decide how much to put in a health plan, how much into retirement, how much into child care (and perhaps one or two other options). This proposal from the teachers’ union came because their members were in different situations. Some had young children. Some did not. So everyone had health care, but they could pick among other options. Some wanted to put more dollars into retirement. etc. I would call this empowering educators. It has been very popular with the teachers.
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Most patients value a second opinion, but perhaps it would simply go to the doctor assigned to them.
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Until people Stand Up and begin to say Enough,they will continue to be used in this political,economical pool that is allowing our children to receive substandard treatment.
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