Sweden decided to open the floodgates of school privatization in 1992. Twenty-three years is a good long time to see the effects of vouchers and for-profit corporations running schools. As this article in The Daily Kos shows, the results are not pretty. Test scores have fallen, segregation of all kinds has increased, one of the private corporations running schools went bankrupt, stranding students and wasting millions.
The gains are hard to discern.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent! This needs to be widely shared. — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
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Susan Dynarski from the University of Michigan School of Education stated on the Leonard Lopate show today that charters schools are successful and outperforming public schools in the urban areas.
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Of course, she did not report on the charter school frauds anywhere. How could she. She depends on grants for her research and she is an economist, an amateur in education.
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“What if?”
What if false were true?
What if night were day?
What if economists knew
About the things they say?
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Susan Dynarski has a Facebook page. I messaged her suggesting she contact Diane Ravitch. Maybe everyone on this site should do the same!!!!
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And I am a Michigan alumnus.
I thought that U of M had better sense. They are SUPPOSED to hire intelligent people who research their beliefs.
SAD day for Michigan.
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It’s amazes me how Democrats put all this privatization on to Republicans. Joe Biden’s brother is one of the biggest owners of for-profit schools in Florida, Secretary Duncan is a major proponent of privatization and common core, and on on on. It’s a debacle that is bipartisan, and anyone responsible for this ruse should be called out. The Federal Department of Education is not a bastion of Republican you know. has this administration done anything to try and stop this movement to digitize education. The greed factor has no party affiliation.
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I don’t think Democrats put all this privatization onto Republicans if they know anything about it.
I don’t know how they could. The Obama Administration has gone much further with federal promotion and funding of charter schools than the Bush Administration did.
The (former) Louisiana Democratic Senator sought to provide federal funding to open “500” charter schools a year, this while 30 states were cutting public school funding under ed reform leadership at the federal and state level.
One would really have to be blind to blame the push to privatize the K-12 education system on Republicans. Democrats have either actively promoted privatization or done nothing to defend or support existing public schools.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/opinion/landrieu-charter-schools/index.html
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Willful blindness — aka, denial — is a very powerful thing.
Many Democrats simply can not believe that Obama would ever do some of the things that he does, so they concoct the excuse that Republicans are behind it and/or blocking him from doing the right thing.
We have seen it time and again.
It’s very hard to deny that these folks are in denial (except by them, of course)
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I agree that democrats are also responsible. But most responsible of all for the privatization of public education is Obama.
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The global move to privatization doesn’t scare me on behalf of the public sector. It scares me on behalf of the private sector.
What does it say about our captains of industry and their political partners that they cannot come up with any new ideas or ways to provide value for money, so they have to take over the public sector?
I think it indicates a real bankruptcy in innovation and creating value on the part of the private sector. They’re just shifting money from public hands to private ownership and taking a cut off the top. They’re not “creating” anything. Cannibalization of one sector by another is not a net gain.
Really? The only thing US business can come up with is privatized schools and privatized prisons and privatized social services?
We may not have a public sector problem. We may have a private sector problem.
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I think you have the right idea. Shifting money around without creating anything new is not innovation. All privatization seems to do is put a lot of money at the top and drain it from the bottom. Those that are already rich get more while middle class teachers that actually spend their incomes and fuel the economy get less. In fact, out of work teachers then become public burden when they collect unemployment or apply for food stamps, and the taxpayer foots the bill. It’s a loss for the economy.
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This is remarkably insightful.
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AMEN. Well stated.
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Chiara,
You have mentioned this several times. I agree. And there is a growing body of literature about this kind of cannibalizing of the “commons” and public goods for profit. Part of it is coming from a growing realization that the hoped-for unbridled economic growth based in technologies may end up producing joblessness on a scale that makes the Great Depression look like a minor blip. Economists are getting baffled by their ineptness in accounting for the “free” exchange of marketable goods, one example being the value of information on this blog.
The creep of commercialism into once “off limits” territory is well documented. Look at almost any program for a non-profit event and it will be littered with the logos of corporate “sponsors” partners. It is marketing on the cheap with an aura of doing good while doing well. But the sleeper is that most of the high skills jobs with routine, predictable, and programable features are being done, or are capable of being done by computers, including some incredibly sophisticated robots.
A recent book that may be of interest is Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by software developer Martin Ford (2015, Basic Books) The title suggests some fear-mongering, but this is a well-infomed and far-reaching examination of some realities of an era where overqualified workers are being produced, the virtues of entrprenurship have been hyped as if a panacea, and the classic “tragedy of the commons” problem is central, usually illustrated by over-fishing and the loss of livelihoods from the known-to-be vanishing resource. That reality is ignored in favor of going out to catch the fish that you can…because competitors will do the same. Grab the exploitable public goods, services, lands, and make a profit. Easy pickings, especially if all that matters to you is profit. A good complement is Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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SomeDAM Poet
June 29, 2015 at 2:49 pm
Willful blindness — aka, denial — is a very powerful thing.
Many Democrats simply can not believe that Obama would ever do some of the things that he does, so they concoct the excuse that Republicans are behind it and/or blocking him from doing the right thing.”
I think a lot of Democrats in Ohio are facing reality about the Obama Administration today:
In a rare bipartisan scene at the White House, President Barack Obama on Monday signed into law two hard-fought bills giving him greater authority to negotiate international trade deals and providing aid to workers whose jobs are displaced by such pacts.
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/Nation/2015/06/29/Obama-signs-trade-worker-assistance-bills-measures-advance-administration-s-economic-agenda.html#yKciXOpvyXiH2b0G.99
Obama directly and specifically ran against crappy trade deals in this state in the ’08 primary, the general and again in 2012. He took endorsements and money from the same labor unions he now demeans, dismisses and tries to discredit.
Still nothing on income inequality, stagnant wages or enforcing the labor laws and protections we have now, but trade deals the Obama Administration can do.
I wonder when the negotiator from Citigroup will let the peons view the deal. They’ll probably release it Christmas Eve.
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Nobody blocked Obama in his scorched earth education policy. He deliberately chose Arne Duncan when he could have selected Linda Darling Hammond.
Teachers are not the only people he lied to in his campaign. As you point out, he was hypocritical with regard to trade deals as well. The TPP will harm job opportunities for the middle class.
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The trade deals outsource jobs and will hurt American workers.
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I have referred to Obama since late 2009 as the “Duplicator”-in-Chief.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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I recently hosted a visit by the Swedish Minister of Upper Secondary and Adult Education. As we toured my school, we discussed the pros and cons of accepting donations from corporations. I warned her not to follow the US example of becoming beholden to venture philanthropists and the Billionaire Boys’ Club. She warned me about the privatization you mentioned here. She said that it has destroyed their public school system.
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Doesn’t it seem probable that privatization actually seeks to segregate? I mean, for years there have been “exclusive” private schools…the “best money can buy”. There are so many ways to exclude. I would imagine that those seeking to “protect” their children from “the other” will continue to find ways to do so. Getting tax dollars to pay for this “privilege” must somehow “sanction” it in the minds of those who are competing to get their children on some imaginary plane of superiority.
And, that is why I don’t approve of most of the private school idea. I can see paying to send a child to a school for religious reasons, even though I may not agree with their religious interpretations. I’d rather they’d do that than try to force public schools to buy into their religion. Since families often don’t agree with one another’s religious absolutes, it sure can’t happen in public schools. Who gets to decide? But, if you can’t stand to send your child to a public school, then pay for it yourself.
In any case, it is to be expected that privatizing will be selective for whatever criteria suits the backers. I guess some people simply don’t want to associate with the masses.
We just can’t let the voucher genie take over.
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