Bruce Baker of Rutgers University here dissects the fundamental flaws at the heart of the corporate reform agenda.
This is the set of policy prescriptions that he reviews:
What I have found most intriguing over time is that the central messaging of these reformy template policy prescriptions is that they will necessarily improve accountability and transparency of education systems, and that they will do so largely by improving the responsiveness of those intractable systems through altered governance and finance, including but not limited to “market” based choice mechanisms.
The standard list of strategies that are supposedly designed to increase accountability and transparency of our education system include, among other things:
- Expansion of charter schools, coupled with multiple charter authorizers (including private entities) and minimized charter regulation
- Adoption of tuition tax credit programs providing individuals and corporations the option to forgo paying a portion of taxes by contributing that amount to a privately governed entity (or entities) that manages tuition scholarships to privately governed/managed schools.
- Parent trigger policies that permit a simple majority of parents of children currently attending any school within a district to mandate that the local board of education displace the entire staff of the school and potentially turn over governance and management of school’s operations (and physical/capital assets?) to a private management company to be operated as a charter school.
It is argued that current large bureaucratic public education systems are simply intractable, non-responsive and can’t be improved – That they are simply not accountable to anyone because they are run by corrupt self-interested public officials elected by less than 2% of eligible voters (turnout for board elections) and that they have no incentive to be responsive because they are guaranteed a constantly growing pot of revenue regardless of performance/quality/responsiveness.
Whatever problems do exist with the design of our public bureaucracies, I would argue that we should exercise extreme caution in accepting uncritically the belief that we could not possibly do worse, and that large scale privatization and contracting of private entities to provide the public good is necessarily a better and more responsive, more efficient, transparent and accountable option.
Read the entire post. He shows, step by step, why each of these claims are misleading; and why they do not lead to greater accountability or transparency, or even to better outcomes for students.
In his analysis of “parent trigger,” he writes:
Parent trigger is quite possibly the most ludicrous corruption of public governance and accountability on the education reformy education policy table. Put simply, parent trigger is the most ill-conceived subversion of governance I’ve seen out there in the reformy playbook.
And he explains why.
It is an important read.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Market-based … Corporate profits and many will be losers….but not the rich and entitled.
Could not be said better!
Yes!
Maybe the POTUS, his cabinet, and congress all need to go back to kindergarten Our government bullies and yet these same folks have meetings about school bullying….ridiculous people.
“Parent trigger is quite possibly the most ludicrous corruption of public governance and accountability on the education reformy education policy table. Put simply, parent trigger is the most ill-conceived subversion of governance I’ve seen out there in the reformy playbook.”
I agree. I was shocked that this was swallowed whole. The entire community owns that asset, NOT simply a bare majority of parents who signed a petition.
The premise is ridiculous. We have a publicly-funded senior center here. No one in their right mind would suggest that the CURRENT group of seniors own the asset and can transfer it based on an “election” that isn’t regulated and is conducted by the entity that hopes to privatize the asset.
Why this was accepted re: public schools I will never know, but I honestly think there would be civil unrest if it happened here.
Bruce does not understand the argument. The argument as Ted Kolderie wrote some years ago (and I believe shared with Diane earlier this year – is that we should adopt a “split screen” approach. We should try to help improve existing public schools and allow people to create new options. It’s not one or the other. It’s both.
It’s not both when “creating new options” takes resources away from public schools.
Dienne, how do you feel about creating options within public school districts? Your concern was raised more than 40 years ago when an interracial group of mothers convinced the St. Paul Public Schools to start a k-12 option. Opponents said this would detract from existing district schools.
In fact, St. Paul developed a series of options including Spanish Immersion, French Immersion, Montessori, and open school, arts high school and others. St. Paul recognized that there is no single public school that will work well for all students.
Joe, you’re talking about St Paul Public School’s Magnet schools. The difference between magnets and charters is significant. Magnets have had greater local accountability and transparency. The current charter movement is being driven too much by egos, self righteousness, greed and profit, and the desire to make “education” the new hot political issue of current and future local elections.
Many of the criticisms posted here apply equally to charter schools and magnet programs. I am thinking about skimming, admission standards, commoditization of education because of parental choice, destruction of the neighborhood, etc.
I am actually talking about both. Yes, there are differences between magnets and charters. For example, magnet schools all over the US are allowed to have admissions tests and many do. In virtually every one of the 42 states that have charter laws, charters are not allowed to have admissions tests.
(The district school I helped start did NOT have admissions tests) The central point remains that people fought hard against the district option I helped start, using precisely the same argument – it would take money from other district schools. Similar groups of people all over the US trying to create new options in the 1970’s encountered the same opposition.
Joe, charter school operators have been arguing for three years in Ohio courts that they own the assets they purchased with public funds. That includes the school plants and the ground they sit on.
In my district, we are right now selling public school assets that are no longer needed. The process is transparent, democratic and governed by state law. The proceeds are public. It is unimaginable to me as a lawyer that they would be anything other than public, from a legal standpoint. It’s not up for debate.
Can you tell me who holds title to the publicly-purchased assets of charter schools in Ohio? Because the Ohio Supreme Court can’t yet tell me. Did school reformers really not consider these questions when they barged ahead with this experiment? Who owns the asset after a Parent Trigger take-over success?
Chiara – I can’t tell you what the situation is in Ohio. In Minnesota a number of us have worked to clarify in state law that items purchased with public funds revert to the state if a school is closed. I think that is an important provision of state law regarding all public schools, district or charter.
“In many critically important ways, under many critically important conditions Charter Schools SIMPLY ARE NOT PUBLIC in every important traditional or legal sense!”
This also goes to transparency and disclosure, in my opinion. When we have state and national leaders ignoring the very real differences between public and charter schools, they are misleading the public. An omission can be as misleading as affirmative deception.
People bring an entire set of assumptions to the phrase “public schools”, understandable, the vast majority of adults and children attended or attend traditional public schools, and those assumptions do not apply to charter schools. It’s wrong to take advantage of that.
There’s a more specific neutral phrase they could use to distinguish between the two systems, and it’s “publicly-funded schools” which would also have the advantage of including the private and religious school vouchers that they are also pushing all over the country. Public schools and then publicly-funded schools. Two systems.
Not making this distinction puts public schools at a disadvantage in the competitive system they have set up. Public schools could highlight that they offer democratic, local governance, protection for due process rights of students and employees, and a regular, complete and public accounting of funds expended.
Consent isn’t really consent unless it’s informed.
Chiara – are suburban schools that hire detectives to keep out low income families living nearby but outside their district “public”? Are urban magnet schools that only take kids who can score in the top 10-20% on national standardized tests “public”? Are schools to which some students are assigned because traditional public schools couldn’t figure out how to work with them “public”?
Long before the charter public school movement came along, there was an idea that there would be publicly funded schools bringing together people from various backgrounds. But that idea faded long before charters came along.
What we currently have is many systems of public education – some that keep out low income families, some that keep out students who can not pass standardized tests. Some “alternative” schools operate in shabby facilities with watered down curriculum, no sports, no arts. Where is the criticism of such programs?
Actually, properly used, the Parent Trigger or Empowerment laws are good policy for obstructive school districts like LAUSD. The problem is no one reads the law so they do not know what is in the law, rules and regulations. When I put up my email address and said I would email anyone who wanted them and Florida’s only three people responded. That is how much people care about knowing what they are talking about. They do not. In the Parent Trigger law in California all that has to happen is the principal leaves and then the parents can set up any kind of governance they want to. CORE-CA suggests the parents partner with students, teachers and the community and form a governance of that combination. All money goes to the education not profits and high salaries for the administrators. Why isn’t anyone telling you this? Because of sending the L.A. Times and LAUSD board of ed. these law, rules and regs., which no one let them see, no LAUSD school can have a Trigger without first the parents being trained and second verified signatures. If you read the law, rules and regs. you would understand that all these Triggers so far were illegal as many of the signatures were illegally obtained through the use of intimidation or promises of any kind. The signature gathers also cannot be paid by signature. The board heard about these illegal signatures before they voted on this. We pointed it out repeatedly. Now both LAUSD and UTLA are behind training. CORE-CA in coordination with the California Title 1 Parent Union put together the first parent training on all their legal options, the law, rules and regulations. This training of parents and community is moving forward no matter what LAUSD and UTLA do as they have not proven to be serious about anything yet.
The biggest fear of the billionaires is public knowledge and participation. This is why we are proposing the public participation and knowledge in the selection of the next high level administrators at LAUSD and nationwide. These are the public’s school districts not theirs. This is the COMMONS. Common means all not select. Therefore, help us at LAUSD. Help the new board demand this process. Then let us spread our public process to all school districts as those people also own their school districts and governments not those in position as they are only one more vote if they vote just like the rest of us.
Thank you, George, for helping to educate families about the rights and opportunities that they have.
I like the attempt to use asymmetric information issues to think about school choice. It gives some badly needed structure to the debate.
Lets look at it in more detail, however. The concern here is about the ability of a family to choose a high quality education for their students from among a variety of possible options. As many have argued, there are many components to education, and no doubt every schools has some strengths and some weaknesses, and the importance of those strengths and weaknesses depends on the skills, talents, and desires of each individual student. It may be the case that there are some important components of a high quality education that are difficult for a family to detect, and these are good candidates for regulation. Other components of a high quality education, however, might be easily observed by households and thus the ability of households to choose one school over another can serve as a substitute for the regulation. There is no reason to regulate every aspect of a school if parents have some choice between schools, but there is good reason to regulate some aspects even if there is choice.
If parents have no choice, it is perfectly reasonable to regulate many more aspects of the school, including the aspects of a school that families can easily observe. Families may in fact insist that all aspects of the school are regulated. School authorities also have and incentive to impose wide ranging, uniform regulations on schools. If all of the schools are as alike as possible, the school authorities can say, justifiably, that having a choice of schools is unimportant because the schools are essentially the same. What the students lose is school specialization that might come from allowing schools to become diversified in those aspects that are easily detected by families.
Looking at the issue from the perspective of information leads us to 1) think about the aspects of a school that are easy for families to observe verses aspects that are difficult for families to observe, 2) base regulation of all schools where parents have choices (charter, magnet, or private schools) based on our thinking about 1, and 3) consider the value of diversity in schools in the presence of a diverse group students.
TE – as you know, some (wealthy) parents always will have choices, both within and outside public schools. We are not debating whether wealthy parents will be able to shut themselves alway from students from low income families. That “choice” does not seem to bother most of the people who post here.
It bothers some of us a lot, which is why we have worked hard to provide strong options for low income, inner city families.
TE,
“. . . the importance of those strengths and weaknesses depends on the skills, talents, and desires of each individual student. . .”
Not only of the student but probably more important are those characteristics of the staff, facilities, resources etc. . . . I think what most here would argue is that it is imperative to have quality schools for all and all the resources that each student population needs. However, as usual the devil is in the details and who has the best experience and knowledge to make those decisions.
There are all sorts of problems with turning education into a consumer good, which Bruce Baker does an excellent job of elucidating. By treating education as a public responsibility, we do lose some ability to choose within the system but the structure still depends on the will of the majority. That does not mean an individual cannot lobby for another viable option within the system, but a public system that functions like an a la carte menu does not exist.
How do private primary and secondary schools manage to succeed while turning education into a consumer good? Private schools are frequently cited here as extremely strong schools and educated millions of students. How do post secondary schools manage to succeed while turning education into a consumer good?
Uh, I’ll bite TE. Is it that the philosophy of education as a public good is faulty at its base? Is it possible that the will of the people as expressed in school board elections is really an expression of minority opinion, mainly the minority of the electorate which is employed by the public school system?
Not many of the people who work in the school system here live in town, so they have a bit of a hard time influencing the election of the school board. However, as in any small town, you can get a vocal minority who get out the vote for a candidate they wish to push who ends up winning because the majority of voters don’t bother to vote. Every once in awhile an issue is important enough for most people to send a signal. I am monitoring the school district much more closely than in the past because of a slow slide toward an over reliance on metrics and a shift toward a more top down management style.
In terms of traditional economic analysis, a schools is what is called a club good. Students can be excluded from attending (this is the basis for zoned schools), and the benefit from attending the school is reduced due to congestion (more traditionally thought of as class size here). The ability to exclude means that a market for education is possible (it is not, for example, possible for clean air), though he existence of private schools is proof enough that it is possible. The problem of congestion suggests that limiting enrollment is desirable (access to GPS satellite signals is not subject to congestion for example, and should not be limited).
HU,
“Is it that the philosophy of education as a public good is faulty at its base?”
No, as the wisdom of those who formed the state’s constitutions which declare that education is not only a public good but very much a right and that the state should provide that public good-public education.
Seems to me that there’s no getting around those facts, philosophically or otherwise.
@2old2tch,
Any thoughts on private schools or post secondary schools as organizations that turn education into a consumer good? It seems to me that possible responses could include 1) private schools and post secondary institutions like the Lab Schools or the University of Chicago in fact provide poor educations because they have commodified education or 2) the children who go to such schools are of a different type than students to go to public schools, and thus are not impacted by the commodification that choice schools create. No doubt there are other responses as well, and I hope to be able to read your response.
I have never had a problem with people paying for a private education. It is their good fortune and right to spend their money how they choose. I am not in favor of public subsidies, vouchers , or tax credits for K-12 programs when we as tax payers fund a public educational system that is provided as a public good, however imperfectly. You have caught me a little bit, though TE. I guess I would have to admit that I find education for profit distasteful.
For me, it detracts from what should be the main mission of an educational institution. For example, one of my students came to me all excited that a college rep had come to his house to speak to his parents about his attending this school. I was a little suspicious given this student’s academic record, and when I heard the name of the school, I told him that he needed to talk to his college counselor before his parents made any commitment. It was one of the for-profit “colleges” that milk families of money with promises that never will be fulfilled.
Perhaps it is a semantic issue. Is there a difference between paying for college and buying a car? Somehow I cannot equate the two experiences. We speak different languages.
For some people, public education is about BOTH – meeting individual needs and meeting needs of society. It’s not one or the other.
For example, giving families options – like allowing high school students to take courses of college campuses, using state funds to pay tuition and book costs, as we do in Minnesota – is good for individual students and for the broader society.
To whom are you responding? I can’t see anyone who objected to public schools supporting innovation within the system.
Not sure where you taught – but since the 1960’s, a growing number of public school districts have offered options to their families. They’ve recognized that there is no single school that will serve all students well.
Moreover, as Deborah Meier has pointed out, offering public school choices is one way is vital if teachers are going to be treated as professionals who have good ideas about how to organize schools. She used that opportunity in New York City, in East Harlem, and again in Boston, with a Pilot School.
This is not to imply that Meier is a fan of charters – but she has pointed out the value of having public school options both for students and for educators. In part because of my experience in seeing how many districts frustrate terrific educators, I’m a fan of carefully developed and implemented charter public school laws, as well as options with districts.
Reformy is not a word. Professors need to learn the English language. Moron level stupidity.
What what: New words are invented all the time. “Reformy” is a clever way to explain the deceit of those who call themselves reformers as they destabilize schools, demonize teachers, and hurt children.