Well, of course, there are scores of education entrepreneurs, the men and women who dream up clever ways to make profits from the field of public education. They have start-ups, they have real-estate investment trusts, they create companies to build data systems, they operate for-profit charter chains, on and on. Some get very rich. They certainly make more money than teachers, who spend their days with children.
Education Next, the journal of rightwing academics and journalists here profiles three entrepreneurs.
The three edu-entrepreneurs featured here are Larry Berger of Wireless Generation, whose company was purchased by Rupert Murdoch for $390 million;
Jonathan Harber, who created Schoolnet and sold it to Pearson for $230 million.
Ron Packard of K12, who founded the company with the Milken brothers, which went public in 2007, and now has revenues of $848 million.
It is astonishing when you think about it that non-educators profit so handsomely when teachers must work for years to reach an annual salary of $50,000.
Who adds social value?
It gives one pause, makes you think about our priorities. And think of who has the great fortunes: Murdoch, Pearson, the Milkens.
I withhold further comment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane: I just have a question… why is it here you say “rightwing” (as I agree) but then in another previous post you let Mike Petrilli off the hook????? Aren’t they one in the same?
Fordham Institute has an outlet at the Cambridge /Harvard “Education Next” and they are tied in with PEPG at Harvard… Martin West at E.N. wrote one of those studies called the Gabrieli MIT study and it is all one many headed hydra. I have been leaving so many comments at the E.N. that they have banned me from commenting. Thanks….
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There’s now a category called “education bankers”. Wonderful.
Buyer beware. In the Detroit EAA, which is a “blended learning” experiment now being conducted on hundreds of children, they ran into money trouble almost immediately.
The first thing they did at the Broad Foundation-EAA when they couldn’t make their funding model work was discuss raising class sizes. The justification for raising class sizes to pack more kids in at 7200 a “seat”? The “use of technology in the instructional approach”. They could increase class size without affecting quality because of “technology”. That’s the discussion.
If they’re planning on using this to increase class sizes and save money on staffing, they should say that. It’s just more hype and “miracle!” nonsense, and if they’re hiding the ball and the real objective is to cut costs on staffing by using technology then it’s also deceptive marketing of this product.
Click to access LiptonPt2.pdf
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“Who adds social value?”
What we have to understand is that, to the Ayn Randians who have taken over the globe, there is no such thing as “social value”. Profit/wealth is the sole definition of “value”. There is no society. Until and unless the rest of us decide to unite and fight back, perhaps they’re right.
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My middle son found the opportunity to take a virtual K-12 administered class very valuable. The flexability it added created value for him.
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Er, need we repeat: “Who is John Galt?” They insist that all the social contexts we have created for creativity and to protect all human beings have nothing to do with their so-called talents. Only their own version of “value.” One of the amazing things about the Ayn Randists — from right wingers like many corporate CEOs to Arne Duncan and Barack Obama — is that they believe, as an article of faith, that this version of reality is reality. Hence, you can begin to hypnotize them just by repeating “Who is John Galt?” over and over until their eyes glaze over — once again. As we reported beginning years ago, when CPS moved downtown from a functional South Side space to three blocks from Chicago’s City Hall (so the mayor could better keep an eye on his eduminions) they rented some of the spaces in their headquarters building out. One of those renters was “John Galt Solutions.” You couldn’t make this kind of stuff up. We have been dealing with articles of faith and a secular theology for the past half century, and it’s infected the thinking of thousands of the so-called “best and the brightest” via those Atlas Shrugged essay contests the honors kids participated in for decades…
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I am not sure how this is a response to my post. Are you saying that the flexability had no value? Who is “they”?
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Christie’s education czar Chris Cerf just announced his resignation. He is leaving to go to work for Murdoch and Joel Klein in their education “reform” company, Amplify. I assume for a slight pay raise. It’s all about the money isn’t it?
Diane, please check up on TheNotebook.org and get a post out on the latest appointees by Gov. Corbett to Philadelphia’s SRC. These two, one with the Democratic handle Bill Green, and the other a Republican purported do-gooder with no education credentials, based on their interviews want to turn The Philadelphia school district into the northern version of North Carolina, and it’s scary.
TheNotebook.org.
Thank you.
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Read the New Republic this week it is fascinating to see how all of the old boy network is in bed with each other. They use public money to laugh at us all the way to the bank. It is all about the money. wonder if they have there own private scientist who can help them either live forever or take their money into the next life. Thank goodness you cant get out of this life alive. Bridge gate will do them all in
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Thanks for this, Diane. As history and reporting this story is so…
As you know, in Chicago we have a regular Ed Next pundit who covers Chicago’s privatization movement for the Tribune’s blogs from his perch in Brooklyn.
I just posted the following to the Ed Next site following that silly article. We’ll see if it stays up… Couldn’t resist.
These salvation narratives are all the same. You would think that regular classroom teachers in the nation’s real public schools had never done anything “innovative” (the worked in the real world) and that we have been waiting for the Word to come to us from the Saviors of the Privatization movement.
Back in the 1980s, when even Apple Computer still supported real public schools, my classroom at Chicago’s Amundsen High School became the nation’s first “Macintosh Computer Classroom.” We utilized various funding sources to equip the entire room, “wall to wall,” with Macs, acquired the first Laser Writer Plus and a phone modem (2400 was superfast back then), and unleashed the kids on the Macs using various software programs, including Word and Excel.
My “kids” (many of whom have gone on to become successful adults around the world) used the computers (and primitive email back before the Web) in more and more exciting and creative ways —
All in a real public school classroom taught by the schools union delegate, an English teacher.
Apple Computer featured our work in a number of publications, and locally in the Chicago area Apple hosted us at various conference to show what the kids could do using the Macintosh (which in those days was the also ran among PCs). We trained the kids to sit working at their computers in the “Macintosh Computer Classroom” until a curious person would stop by. Then the person would ask “How did you do that?” and the kids would stand up and ask the person to sit down, explaining how to “Do it…”
That was before Steve Jobs got into his final messianic phase and denounced the public schools that had created him, among others, and the official party line of the one percent shifted into a complete trashing of the nation’s real public schools. And so, the ahistorical and hagiographic piece of nonsense you publish here is typical of the kind of “reporting” currently being passed around in your genre.
Trouble is, it’s still bullshit, even if the profits to the people you profile prove, once again, there are suckers born every minute in the age of the One Percent…
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I also love how every one of these pieces includes the phrase “the 600 billion dollar education market”:
“Meanwhile, few sectors are more desperate for new ideas than the $600 billion system of K–12 public education.”
It’s always in there.
It makes sense, the objective here is to make money after all, but it’s a little amusing to read given the current political climate, where teachers who make 37k a year are portrayed as greedy, self-interested union thugs and people who can’t stop repeating the phrase “600 billion education market” are portrayed as saintly, self-sacrificing advocates for children.
It’s just nonsense. I don’t know why they can’t just sell product without pretending they’re part of a “movement”. If I had to choose which actor was more “self-interested” in this, I think I’d pick the edu-business mogul over the teacher. Anyone would. It’s obvious.
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Diane and Others,
“Ron Packard of K12, who founded the company with the Milken brothers, which went public in 2007, and now has revenues of $848 million.
It is astonishing when you think about it that non-educators profit so handsomely when teachers must work for years to reach an annual salary of $50,000.”
Yes, you are right on the mark.
The reformers largely want to turn teaching into a revolving door, low wage paying job instead of a critical thinker’s, highly specialized profession that marries art and science in how to communicate to children and empower and unleash their intellectual development.
Teaching is a thinking person’s profession.
The Edu-Predator-prenuers are not insterested in anything but their bottom line, and those “teachers” working in their trenches will all one day have to have PhDs in this and that, like literacy and cognitive sciences, and we of the doctoral class will be making $20,000 a year according to this new model. The requirements will become more stringent as the pay gets lower and the teaching and learning are lowered to their most base and basic levels of rote memorization, skill, kill, and drill (those things have their place in good teaching, but it’s small!).
Worse will be our raising generations of children who will not be cognitively equipped to think critically and challange, as civic particpants, the status quo of the power structure here in the United States.
Uh-oh: Think “Hunger Games” . . . . . . . . . .
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I’ve had one or another of my children in Ohio public schools for the last twenty years. I have yet to hear a public school teacher refer to any of them as part of the “600 billion K-12 public education market”, yet I’m supposed to buy this nonsense that “the status quo” are concerned about “adults” rather than children.
Self interest! We must stamp that out! Except if you’re making 5 million as the CEO of one of these concerns, in which case you’re as pure as the driven snow and only thinking of The Children.
In what other “sector” is this nonsense peddled? No one would buy it anywhere else.
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“Teaching is a thinking person’s profession.”
It’s also a poor man’s profession, though, typically. That was one of the first things that hit me pretty hard when I was getting my certification (I already had a BA in music from a liberal arts college, but I went back to get my certificate). As I’ve shared on this blog before, I didn’t like hearing that. I had never thought of my stock as being poor, and compared to the kids who lived in projects in my town, I was far from poor. But the fact is, my daddy was a preacher.
The fact is if a person has connections to banking, finance, business, they typically go that way for careers (it seems). You might have a rogue kid from a big family who becomes a teacher, or the one who breaks the mold, but teachers OFTEN have become teachers because it is what was a reasonable path that was open to them.
And then back when it was mostly women, they hoped to marry a doctor or lawyer or business man, and if they stayed in teaching (rather than homemaking), their salaries complimented their husband’s nicely.
The whole game is changing. I think this is also why someone like Wendy Kopp needed to think of a new avenue for teachers. Because humbling yourself to become one carries a statement that you are not a banker or a person in finance. You are real. Money is not your game. And many people did not want to take on that ownership—-so they want to make this hybrid of teaching AND letting money be the game. It’s like a polygamy of priorities.
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to clarify, a professor declared that “teaching is a poor man’s profession” in my Education Psychology class. He was an older fella. . .old school, had been there since the University was a teacher’s college.
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How about you, Diane? Does pulling in a fee of $15,000 to lecture an audience on the ills of education reform qualify you as an Education Entrepreneur, especially when you sell views that are equally simplistic and manipulative as edupreneurs on the opposite end of the idealogical spectrum. (Watch how quickly Diane pulls this posting).
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“(Watch how quickly Diane pulls this posting).”
Hint: You’re supposed to wait until *after* something happens before playing the victim card.
You clearly don’t know Diane if you think she “pulls postings” willy nilly. If anything, I think she’ll get a kick out of leaving this up just to make you look whiny.
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I know enough to know that she has censored me on numerous occasions. On other occasions, her response to my critical comments and questions has been to accuse me of “not caring about kids” or resorting to the kind of retorts that one might hear on an elementary school playground (“Nobody is forcing you to participate in this blog”; “It’s a free country”). She may or may not censor my latest comment, and frankly, I couldn’t care less if I sound “whiny”. I do think it’s important that participants take a good hard look at how she frames the discussions on a blog that she promotes as a site “to discuss better education for all.” For example, she recently insinuated that it’s a waste to spend money on instructional coaches because it prevents schools from hiring more teachers. This “willy nilly” judgment comes from someone whose perspectives on what it takes to teach and prepare teachers to teach well in K-12 schools, has been formed from the confines of university offices, libraries, and the occasional outing to the very schools that she freely comments on with such confidence and authority.
So, since the general topic is how money should be spent to improve education “for all”, and since we are at the moment considering how much specific individuals should be compensated for their work in education, it seems appropriate to ask if the $15,000 Diane Ravitch is paid to give a single lecture on education is better spent, say, hiring more coaches for teachers sorely in need of on-going professional development and support.
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Your an innumerate fool Ratner. Do the math. $15K per lecture at 50 lectures a year is $750,000. Now there are 50 million students in the US, 12 million of which live in poverty. Now if Diane were to donate $700,000 that would amount to $17 per impoverished student. Oh wait, forgot about her taxes. Make that $11 per student. Oops, I didn’t deduct ravel expenses . . . $8 per student. Three-ring binders for everyone! Personal attacks are all you have left; a bad sign for you and your ilk. Besides the premise of your argument is more ridiculous than my math.
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“…it seems appropriate to ask if the $15,000 Diane Ravitch is paid to give a single lecture on education is better spent…”
Nice attempt to conflate, but Diane’s speaking fees rarely if ever come from the public coffers. What private organizations agree to pay her out of their own funds is their business.
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BTW, this: “For example, she recently insinuated that it’s a waste to spend money on instructional coaches because it prevents schools from hiring more teachers.”
Frankly, I hope she did more than “insinuate”. I hope she flat out said it. What the hell is an “instructional coach”? And why indeed would it make sense to hire any at a time when actual, certified, experienced, damn good teachers are being let go left and right?
And, BTW, I’ve been reading this blog almost since the beginning. I can remember lots of your comments, but none that ever got removed. Perhaps you could re-post something that was deleted so we can all see just how outrageous it was?
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Dienne writes: “And, BTW, I’ve been reading this blog almost since the beginning. I can remember lots of your comments, but none that ever got removed.”
Perhaps you didn’t see the removed posts because they were removed.
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No, she left your raunchiest one up. That’s how I found it and reposted to you a month or so ago. Your ignorant legacy is here for all to read.
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I have had posts removed in the past. One was during a discussion with Duane about the changing standards of what it meant to be poor. The post included the “rubric” that was used in the first attempt to count the number of poor in England.
There was also the unfortunate K Spradling incident where the post and thread were all removed, but I believe they were later restored.
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@Andrew Ratner: I didn’t know that Diane Ravitch was a billionaire who spent millions buying state and federal legislators? Andrew engages in an ad hominem attack without stating his opinion on the subject at hand.
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The critical error in your argument is there are ‘opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.’ Not so. There are facts and then there is dogma. Edu-preneures are selling dogma and hiding behind a cloak of altruism. Car salesmen call this bait & switch. Apologies to car salesmen.
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The difference is in manipulation and in taking tax money. Dr. Ravitch is not manipulating any law to re-channel money in her direction.
Obviously there are and will need to be businesses that provide goods and services for K-12 public schools. The question is by what method do they obtain their compensation and is it reasonable in comparison with what other aspects of the endeavor cost. And most importantly, is it fleecing tax payers?
She won’t pull your comment. She’s not that shallow or cowardly.
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I think it’s puzzling when reformer types put ice and food coloring in a bowl with some artificial sweetener and get the government to pay for it as dessert for the masses, and then point to someone selling ice cream in an ice cream parlor and say, “well, you sold ice cream for money!”
How old are the people saying things like this? Really. I don’t get it.
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Gee, Andrew RAT-ner.
Diane’s speaking fees are nothign compared to Bill Clinton’s and Michelle Rhee’s.
Any person who earns prominence in a field – from any camp – can command market value fees, and if anything, Diane’s are below-market. In far too many cases, she waives her fees just to permit access to getting some very important messages out to the misinformed and underinformed public.
More power to here and others like her.
Diane’s personal wealth is bupkus compared to the salaries of people like Wendy Kopp, Geoffrey Canada, Eva Moskotwitz, and Joel Klein.
So, please Andrew, take your childish and idiotic baiting and put the razor sharp hook with the wriggling worm right into your own mouth . . . . If there isn’t enough room there, then try the vast empty space between your ears . . . . .
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This is typical behavior of the whiny cry baby Andrew…search his name and this blog, he is constantly insulting Diane while looking like a fool. I guess KIPP isn’t paying him any more to “research”.
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I think no one tested the milk on their wrist in KIPP’s bottle, and ended up nursing it to baby whiny Mr. Ratner, who now has a burned palate . . . . .
Someone get him to the emergency room.
And leave him there . . . .
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Better trolls, please.
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I hope Chemtchr did not find me to be trolling.
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“I withhold further comment.”
Could it be because you”re well on your way to being a Commie Pinko????
Ain’t nuthin worse than a conservative turning Commie Pinko!!!
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How about the students. Lets create a system where they have ownership and are the true entrepreneurs of education.
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I am a non-party affiliated U.S. citizen teacher who has read thoroughly Ayn Rand’s work and don’t have a problem with people making a profit from a business. I served my country in the military for nearly thirty years and I believe I continue that service by teaching our children. I read this blog daily and comment infrequently and distribute or disseminate its postings to my colleagues to keep them informed in our battle to keep education a positive journey to our continued posterity. It is unfortunate that Diane chose to use the term”right-wing” because it interjects the current divisive political power struggle in our country. The subscribers to this blog and all those patriots who wish to keep our educational system free from unethical profit taking and the damage to the educational journey we should be conducting, while they must be aware that politics are how control of affairs, must realize that this battle, this struggle must be at it’s core apolitical in its’ intent or it will be marginalized by the forces of political power in order to gain and maintain even more authority by privileged few over our American society.
The image in my mind at the moment is the 60’s TV commercial showing a proud native american with tears in his eyes after viewing the vast pollution of the land. I am a teacher citizen who is witnessing a fork in the road for our future and I am holding back the tears because I refuse to believe that Abraham Lincoln may have correctly stated that no external force will destroy our Union, we will destroy it from within.
Please drop the labels, let’s stand together against the 1% and protect the future for our children.
You know I believe a little does of careful Civil Disobedience a la Whitman, if practiced across the nation could weaken and crumble this educational house of cards.
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Jim,
You offer some valuable insights and hope. Thank you.
I too believe firmly in the oprn markets of capitalism, but they no longer have a robust system of checks and balances to prevent their excesses from destroying capitalism.
Right now, such excesses have swallowed many of us and are continuing to do so.
Let us 98 to 99% stand against the 1 to 2% and reclaim the dignity of the middle and working class, whether they work for someone or are in business for themselves.
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Great post Jim! I’m tired of pigeonholing people politically. Stop the name calling. Both the far right and far left are highjacking the conversation from a real dialogue that moves our country’s educational system forward. Common sense anyone?
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It’s the “center” that wants charter schools.
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Dienne,
So what does ‘center” mean? The Center for the Destruction of American Education? If you type Center of American Politics you get a wide range of organizations and opinions, even one place called the Radical Center of American Politics.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Center%20of%20American%20P%7Bolitics&pc=conduit&ptag=A0DEA194AA32B4FBDA8F&form=CONMHP&conlogo=CT3210127
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I have no problem with Diane using the right wing label because it is a glaring fact, the elephant in the room, so to speak. However, the school Rheeform movement is bipartisan, both political parties are on board for so called school reform (really deform). Obama, a Democrat and supposed liberal is the author of some really horrific educational policies; RTTT is just as bad and just as much of a failure as NCLB. Al Sharpton and Oprah are for charter schools and the whole school reform disaster and they are liberals in so many other aspects. For the most part though, the so called school “reform” movement is a right wing/libertarian creation but many liberals and Democrats are on the corporate bandwagon, too.
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Yes they are!
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Per civil disobedience, like Guilford County in NC this week.
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“(Watch how quickly Diane pulls this posting)”
Andrew,
Diane would not pull such a posting, but the fact that you were so quick to warn others shows us, in a psychological revelation of, in part, who you are, what YOU would do if such a stupid lie were being perpertrated about you.
Why not start you own blog, where at least half of one person would be interested in reading and commenting on it?
But then again, your giggly laughable lack of critical thinking did give many of us some cheer on this dreary icy day . . . . .
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Actually, Robert, it was your strong push back that gave me some cheer. Andrew’s comment just made me roll my eyes and wonder where the adults are. Thank goodness some showed up.
🙂
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Ouch my belly hurts from laughing!
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I have a dream… that public school teachers across America are allowed to file a class action lawsuit against any corporate entity backing and profiting by “ed reform” for crimes against humanity (denying our youth the right to a real education is a crime against humanity)… and this Ravitch comment would be the perfect opening argument!
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I’ll give a further comment. Milken is a convicted felon that bankrupt the S&L’s and many senior citizens of their retirement savings. Why is a convicted felon allowed to profit off education? Because “that’s where the money is!” (Forgot author of the quote)
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From Snopes:
“Which brings us to the meat of the matter. [Willie] Sutton is famous for two things: His fascinating career as an illegal withdrawals specialist (bank robber, that is) and for a pithy rejoinder supposedly uttered in response to an interviewer’s query about why he robbed banks. While lore would have it that the bank robber replied “Because that’s where the money is” to that common question, Sutton denied ever having said it. “The credit belongs to some enterprising reporter who apparently felt a need to fill out his copy,” wrote Sutton in his autobiography. “I can’t even remember where I first read it. It just seemed to appear one day, and then it was everywhere.”
The earliest print sighting of the coined phrase dates to 15 March 1952, when it appeared in Redlands Daily Facts, a Southern California newspaper.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/quotes/sutton.asp#qhvUZzv2EpT7UKAI.99
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Glad I couldn’t recall the author!
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Teachers need to jettison their so-called union leaders and take over their schools.
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How true. The union leaders AFT/UFT and NEA are complicit in the disastrous “reform” policies.
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It’s time for a good joke. Dienne likes a good joke. I’m sure other readers could use one too.
Here goes (please pardon any stereotypes. . .they’re the stuff jokes are made of).
A small plane crashed on a remote island that was inhabited by cannibals. Three men survived: a German soldier, a Japanese patriot and a New York City cab driver.
Upon discovering the cannibals, a spokesman for the cannibals informs the survivors, one at a time, of the following:
“We are cannibals. We’re going to kill you. We’ll eat your meat, use your bones for tools and line the bottom of our boats with your flesh. Do you have any last wishes?”
The German soldier requests a luger, so that he can die with honor. The cannibals go into a hut and, oddly, come back with a German luger and the German soldier takes his life.
The Japanese man asks for a sword. Oddly enough, the cannibals have one and they present it to him and he commits harikiri.
Then comes the New York City taxi driver. He asks for a fork.
“A fork?” the cannibals inquire.
“Yeah. . .a fork (fau-uhk, as they say in Brooklyn).” And the cannibals go to the hut and return with a fork.
The cab driver begins stabbing himself all over with the fork while the cannibals watch in amazement.
“This is what I think uh yuh f—–in boat!”
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oops!
It still hurts to laugh!!!! :}
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🙂
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Um, maybe it’s just me, but ain’t it an interesting COINCIDENCE that PARCC is a COMPUTER-BASED ASSESSMENT???
( Had a white wire hanging in my kinder classroom just today- my kiddos asked the gentleman what it was for, to which he responded, “To connect the wireless”).
Hmmmmmm….
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I rather bristled at the ‘right-wing’ comment myself. While the left’s hypocrisy never fails to provide fodder for a chuckle, the right’s abuse of capitalism is legitimite cause for concern. What I do see here is mockery, sarcasm, hatefulness and general childish refusal to debate on ‘gentlemanly’ terms. It’s OK to defend your guru, Diane, but conversely, it’s OK to ask a perfectly resonable question.
Quite honestly, too many of you appear to be in absolute denial about the state of public education long before charters came upon the scene. To say it was decaying, to say it was bloated with government bureaucracy, to say it was ‘boss hog’ ruled is all understatement. One voice of reason did mention something about working together to make it better.
Folks, permitting it to remain as it was would have resulted in a nation of even more ill-educated. Has the government helped with NCLB, A Thousand Points of Light, RTTT, et.al? I think not. Has it helped by closing neighborhood schools? Big mistake, in my opinion. But, attacking those of us who value entepreneurship and economic freedom is not going to solve any issues. Public schools are government operated–bottom line. They were failing–bottom line. Those who really do care about children (and when any Janus-faced politician mentions ‘the poor children,’ do beware–ithey care nothing for your children nor mine) are willing to, at the very least, make at attempt to change a floundering status quo.
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That’s what a “Nation at Risk” tried to promote 30 years ago. Public Ed. was never broken. How else to explain the continuing success of the U.S. despite big companies exporting manufacturing plants, knowhow and patents overseas. This is a manufactured crisis for greedy entrepreneurs to capture public tax dollars for private gain. At least Rupert Murdoch was honest about. He stated that he wanted a piece of the 600 billion or so tax dollars spent on public education. He’s trying that with “Amplify”.
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