In this excellent analysis, Paul Thomas lists the many education policy ideas that are at the core of corporate reform–and how they have been proven wrong.
At first glance, it is infuriation to realize that no part of the corporate reform agenda works.
But on second thought, it is encouraging to realize that the policies the reformers are pushing ARE the STATUS QUO and IT IS FAILING.
It is failing, and failing, and failing.
As the old adage goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Eventually, the hedge fund managers will get bored and find another hobby.
Eventually, the public will wake up and realize that profiteers are stealing their public schools.
And then the game will be over.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Eventually, the hedge fund managers will get bored and find another hobby.”
Only when there’s no more money to be made.
agree
But when they DO wake up, how many kids will have been irreparably harmed? How many careers will have been ruined? How many more kids will drop out in despair? Do the reformers even care? I honestly think the privatizers only care about money.
Yes, Dienne the hedge fund and private equity managers make money for a living. They are expert at it and it is no hobby for them.
They will not get bored and turn away. They will only leave our educational field of engagement once there is no more money to be made.
They will never wake up and notice that child lives have been irreparably harmed. These lives are numerical abstractions to them and that abstraction is bolstered by the “data” currently being generated, analyzed and stratified by the for-profit “education reform” industries they are invested in.
I hope it is failing and falling apart at their feet in shambles. But we remain and to regain our free public school system, we must humanize the promising lives of these children and protect them from the predators.
Anything to make a buck, anyway and anyhow.
We should all have learned our lesson from the sub-prime mortgage packaging as trade-able securities and falsely rated to boost fraudulent sales.
Now the same fraudulent rationales to make money in the “education market” may destroy our public schools.
If that happens, God help us.
Where are our union managements? Their silence is deafening.
Diane,
Over the past several years I have read countless articles and books all saying basically the same thing: The foundations of current education reform – competition, reward, sanctions and consequential testing – are not supported by evidence. In fact, they are contraindicated. There use as policy levers promotes competition rather than collaboration, teaching to the test rather than deeper sustainable learning and increased school segregation. Many have expressed incredulity that reform supporters ignore evidence. Maybe it is not so surprising.
I think there are two explanations.
The first is the power of ideological blinders and hubris or what I called in an earlier article, The Fog of the Education War. (http://www.arthurcamins.com/?p=36)
The second explanation is different goals and values. I, and many other critics of current reform strategies place high value on education for democratic participation and responsible citizenship, educational equity for all and deeper learning. We have argued that charter schools, merit pay and over-testing undermine those goals. Maybe “reformers” know this too, but do not object. Maybe they want different things. Maybe they accept inequality as a fact of life. And, some may be just out to make a buck.
The question is which road will we choose – improvement for all or just a few. (http://www.arthurcamins.com/?p=191)
“Maybe they (the so-called reformers) accept inequality as a fact of life.”
Not only do they accept it, they directly benefit from it, and thus seek to take over the public schools to further institutionalize it.
Thomas starts his article by posing and answering the following question.
…, please identify what XYZ represents in the following statement about “What We Know Now”:
Is there a bottom line to all of this? If there is one, it would appear to be this: Despite media coverage, which has been exceedingly selective and misrepresentative, and despite the anecdotal meanderings of politicians, community members, educators, board members, parents, and students, XYZ have not been effective in achieving the outcomes they were assumed to aid….
This analysis is addressing school uniform policies, conducted by sociologist David L. Brunsma who examined evidence on school uniform effectiveness (did school uniform policies achieve stated goals of those policies) “from a variety of data gathered during eight years of rigorous research into this issue.”
Thomas may or may not be right about all the other issues that he raises, but he really should have read the original Brunsma and Rockquemore (1998) research article and thought about it a bit before using it as his opening salvo.
In brief, B&R’s article is based on an analysis of some 4,578 cases drawn from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988. They use a standard multiple regression approach to attempt to isolate the potential impact on the wearing of school uniforms on both behavioral and academic outcomes. Unfortunately the analysis is seriously limited because of 4,578 students in the data set only approximately 230 students actually wore uniforms and of these the vast majority of uniforms attended Catholic schools with the rest attending private schools. What B & R’s statistical analysis shows is that uniforms appear to make little difference among students attending Catholic schools. As Diane noted when she compared Catholic to Charter schools: “The Catholic schools have a proven record. They are safe, well-disciplined, and get consistently good results.” https://dianeravitch.net/2012/05/21/charter-schools-vs-catholic-schools/
But more fundamentally, Brunsma and Rockquemore set up an hypothesis that makes no sense: Do school uniforms in isolation impact academic achievement and behavioral outcomes? Anyone who has been to a school requiring uniforms would laugh at this notion. Clearly the push for school uniforms is not driven by the notion that sartorial uniformity magically increases test scores. But when coupled with a concerted effort to improve student discipline and require adherence to behavioral codes, as happens in Catholic schools, then perhaps it can make a difference. Brunsma and Rockquemore may have a point in responding to more extreme media statements about the benefits of uniforms but they would have been better served by using simple logic or a different data set that was more in line with their policy conclusions.
Bottom line, Thomas’s opening salvo is essentially misdirected and, since it is based on a misinterpretation of the Brunsma and Rockquemore’s data, makes me more hesitant to accept his other rather sweeping generalizations.
P.S. Brunsma and Rockquemore’s work was critiqued in a different way by Ann Bodine (2003) and Brunsma and Rockquemore (2003) responded to this critique. JSTOR provides access to these Journal of Educational Research articles.
They are too addicted to the easy money in education. This is a piece of cake next to the other big pot which is defense. This is why I say that LCFF and CORE in California is the virus in the petri dish to infect the entire country with more money to steal and zero accountability. We have been told by a high official in public that this is the equivalent of Criminal Justice Realignment and is Education Realignment. We know now the mess of Criminal Justice Realignment. We have worked tirelessly on the criminal justice realignment legislatively for two years now. We know what is coming down in education from this experience.
Concerning charter school properties as in the Florida scam you can double your money in 7 years instead of 12 years by using the tax code for renting or leasing property to charter schools. The people in Florida are just being the hedge fund themselves it seems so that they make it on every percentage there is. Who would give up massive free money? Not them, that’s for sure.
They will start to drop out after they are faced with some lawsuits for discrimination, or they are required to do any one of the things within a school district would affect the bottom line, but which is necessary.