Archives for the month of: August, 2015
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Global Problem of Privatization and Commercialization

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2015 //
3

Angelo Gavrielatos is the executive director of Education International, an association of teachers’ unions from around the world. Previously he led the Australian Teachers Federation.

Gavrielatos writes: The case for a Global Response to the Commercialisation and Privatisation of Education is not only clear, it is urgent. In the context of the many challenges that confront public education systems globally, the increasing commercialisation and privatisation in and of education represent the greatest threat to education as a public good and to equality in education access and outcomes.

It should therefore not be of any surprise to anyone that this issue dominated the proceedings of the 7th World Congress of Education International (EI)[i], which took place between 22-26 July in Ottawa, Canada, Noting the dimension and the threat to students, teachers, education support personnel and quality public education for all posed by the ongoing commercialisation and privatisation of education, the World Congress , consisting of nearly 2,000 delegates, resolved that we need a global response to the rapidly expanding for-profit corporate sector involvement in education. Whilst this carries on from EI’s existing work on privatisation and member organisation national campaigns focused on privatisation, the Global Response to the Commercialisation and Privatisation in and of Education aims to draw these efforts together with a view to delivering a stronger more focused response by harnessing collective energy and influence.

This Global Response aims to focus on the engagement of education corporations[ii] in various aspects of education governance, in particular the sale and provision of for-profit education and education services, such as standardised testing and evaluation tools, and policy formation and implementation. It seeks specifically to advocate against the expansion of profit-making in public education where it undermines the right of all students to free quality education, creates and entrenches inequalities in education, undermines the working conditions and rights of teachers and other education workers, and erodes democratic decision-making and public accountability in relation to education governance. This is informed by an analysis highlighting the rapid growth of education corporations/edu-businesses, the size, reach and influence of which had not been foreseen.

With little, if any regard for national borders, the nation state of national sovereignty, the rapid growth of education corporations/edu-businesses is driven by the desire on the part of global capital to access the relatively untapped education market valued at approximately $4.5 to $5 trillion USD per annum. A figure predicted to grow to $6 to S7 trillion USD per annum in a couple of years. Having identified the lucrative nature of the education market, and in particular how much the limitless, sustainable resource of children, our students, and their education represents, global education corporations/edu-businesses have set about trying to influence and control education in order to satisfy their profit motives. This Global Response will also focus on governments which in too many cases are abrogating their obligations to ensuring that every child, every student has access to a high quality free public education by either allowing or indeed facilitating and encouraging the growth in the commercialisation and privatisation of education.

The danger of governments outsourcing education activities to profit-making corporations is that it makes it possible for these actors to not only ‘reap uncontrolled profit’, but also to assert their influence in policy processes and to steer education agendas in ways that may not align with international agreements and national priorities. This poses a risk not only for public education systems themselves, but also their ability to promote democracy, social cohesion and equity.

Moreover, it raises fundamental questions about whose interests are being served by these developments in education, and with what outcomes. Now more than ever, the global political landscape and the growing influence and dominance of global corporate actors require us all to reach out and build community alliances in a way we have never done so before if we are to resist and, more importantly, reverse current trends. Failure to do so will put at risk that great social enterprise of public education. [i] Education International (EI) is the Global Union Federation which represents more than 32 million teachers and other education workers form more than 170 countries. [ii]

Among the most influential corporations operating in the global education market is the education conglomerate Pearson. Through aggressive lobbying, campaign contributions and PR efforts, Pearson exerts great influence over policymaking and policymakers in many countries. Describing what could be interpreted as giving rise to a potential conflict of interest, new research by Jünemann and Ball, Pearson and PALF: The Mutating Giant http://www.educationincrisis.net/resources/ei-publications highlights why the profit motive has no place in dictating what is taught, how it is taught, how it is assessed nor how schools, colleges and universities are organised. Of Pearson’s modus operandi, Jünemann and Ball note: “as Pearson is contributing to the global education policy debate, it is constructing the education policy problems that will then generate a market for its products and services in the form of the solutions. In effect, part of the more general aim of activities like the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF)…is the creation of more market opportunities for Pearson’s products. More generally, global education reform packages which include the use of information technology and shifts from input-based to output-led policy-making, offer a whole new set of market opportunities to Pearson.

Pearson is involved both in seeking to influence the education policy environment, the way that policy ‘solutions’ are conceived, and, at the same time, creating new market niches that its constantly adapting and transforming business can then address and respond to with new ‘products’. In this sense, the fulfilment of social purpose is directly and indirectly related to the search for and creation of new opportunities for profit…”(p3) Education International Internationale de l’Éducation Internacional de la Educación Angelo Gavrielatos, Project Director | Brussels |Belgium Tel.:+32 2 224 06 11 | Fax: +32 2 224 06 06| http://www.ei-ie.org

Categories Education Industry, International, Privatization

Part 2: The Parthenon Group? Is Your Child Profitable?

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2015 //
7

Here is another citizen-educator, Rob Taylor, a teacher of special education in Tennessee, who researched the Parthenon Group. Here he shares what he learned by speaking to the Knox County Schools Board of Education in February 2014:

“Is Knox County Schools’ vision “Excellence for ALL Children”? Or only the ones who are “more profitable than others”?

“Are OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS places where ALL students have equal access to the opportunities afforded to them by a quality, FREE public education for the purpose of furthering the public good, or are they places “where private investors can PLAY?”

“Those are shocking questions, but ones I was forced to ask myself when researching the Boston-based Parthenon Group, who as you know Knox County Schools is currently paying (with a grant from the Gates Foundation of over a million dollars combined with an additional $360,000 of local money) in order to conduct a “resource analysis” of our school systems assets.

“I have watched representatives from the Parthenon Group give multiple presentations before This Board as recently as this week, a hallmark of which has been exhaustive PowerPoint arrangements outlining various statistical analyses to support their upcoming recommendations. It is my concern that these recommendations will be little more than a justification for a predetermined outcome. Namely: the opening up of our School System’s resources to the interests of for-profit businesses and private investors.

“Members of this board have stated that teachers presenting concerns to The Board provide EVIDENCE that such concerns are valid, and I have provided each of you this evening with a hard copy of a DIFFERENT KIND of PowerPoint, created by Parthenon partner and member of Parthenon’s Education Practice, Robert Lytle, which was created a few years ago for presentation to potential investors.

“I invite you to review this at your leisure but also to notice a number of statements offered in this presentation:

“Page 2: Asks the question: “Where Can Financial Investors Play?”,

“Page 3: Promises “..big, high-profile deals” and “fertile ground for proprietary opportunities”.

“Page 4: States “deals are everywhere”, and describes the 23 Billion dollar per-year revenue streams available to investors from testing, assessment, and outsourced school management.

“And MOST DISTURBINGLY, on p. 13, the quote “All students are not equal; SOME ARE MORE PROFITABLE THAN OTHERS.”

“I wonder, which students are less-than- equal? My Special Education students in my Elementary classroom? Or maybe my own children and their first and fourth-grade classmates?

“I find it alarming that the quality of ANY CHILD would be determined by the amount of PROFIT their public-school education might generate for a third-party investor, and frightening that members of an organization which would make such a statement – in this case the Parthenon Group, would be involved in an advisory capacity or involved with ANY decision-making process at the highest levels of our district.

“Lest my concerns be dismissed on the basis that the PowerPoint I have provided you this evening may have been misconstrued or taken out of context, I would like to inform The Board of the content of the recommendations made by Parthenon in other school districts with which they have contracted.

“In Memphis / Shelby County Schools, the Parthenon Group recommended a reduction in educator salaries , retirement and health benefits, an increase in class sizes, and an expansion of so-called merit pay based upon standardized test scores.

“Similar recommendations were made by Parthenon for the Metro Nashville Public Schools, with the additional recommendation that certain student services, such as Special Education, be incrementally outsourced and privatized. Nashville began outsourcing special education functions in 2010 to the for-profit Spectrum Academy, a division of Educational Services of America.

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding

The Parthenon Group: Saviors, Swindlers, or Hustlers?

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2015 //
4

A reader from Tennessee sent this comment:

“Well, well, Knox County Schools’ old friend The Parthenon group raises its ugly head out of the caves of East TN up to Chicago. In 2014 KCS Board of Education hired The Parthenon Group to do a “resource analysis” to the board about “improving “the school system. Parthenon made the usual recommendations – increase class size, cut librarians, counselors, etc- all about cutting costs. Some of us did a little investigating into Parthenon & presented this info to the school board in 2014. On the Parthenon Group’s website we located 2 presentations they gave to potential investors about money making opportunities in education. One of their prime examples for return on investment $$$ was Corinthian College. You may recall Corinthian’s fraud & its backdoor investor bailout by Duncan’s DoEd.

http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-signs-plan-protect-students-avoiding-immediate-closure-corinthian-colleges

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-corinthian-colleges-20140716-story.html#page=1

“Here is my speech to KCS BoEd made in March 2014 about The Parthenon Group.

“When I was much younger my Daddy & I went looking to buy a car. I decided on a car by first picking the one that was painted my favorite color and my Daddy always decided on a car by first looking under the hood. Thank heaven, I didn’t make the final decisions on buying cars for the family. I learned from my Daddy.

“After reading the Parthenon Group’s recommendations, our school community should should under their hood.

“Parthenon’s education group is made up of “entrepreneurial” consultants, mostly newly minted MBAs. It’s ironic that they would recommend disincentivize teachers in obtaining advanced degrees when 10 of them have MBA’s. Teachers are our children’s models for pursuing more education, not less.

“In 2009 & 2012 The Parthenon education group made 2 presentations entitled INVESTING IN EDUCATION. WHERE ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES & HOW CAN YOU CAPTURE THEM? and PARTHENON PERSPECTIVES : BALANCING OPPORTUNITIES & RISK, respectively.

“The target of these OTHER reports are businesspersons or business entities that want to start up a new for-profit school systems. Parthenon is selling potential profiteers happy fairy tales of “creative destruction.”

“Parthenon’s vision for their investors is what they envision for public education, including Knox Co Schools- that is, to kick public schools to the curb and take over via charters. The old public ed system will, like public utilities, be killed. And then–they’ll already be positioned to take over.

“Business types don’t like to be reminded of other unsuccessful “creative destructions” For example, how the death of public utilities spawned Enron.

“The long-term goal presented here is not to keep the public school system –it’s to grow for-profit schools to be much larger than the public system, then reduce public schools enrollment to those “less profitable” students.

“Note the questions slide 5: “How well can you supplement the management teams” and ” what is your experience as an activist owner? Translation: This is about business people taking over schools, and running them.
In the meantime, they can only suck up public funding through very creative “non-traditional” (translation: deceptive) strategies. Also slide 5.
Hence their question: “Will you do non-traditional structures? (non-profits…MINORITY INTERESTS! Getting rich while pretending to be a nonprofit–can you say scam?

“The one story of profitability & success is Corthinian Colleges. The more you read about Corinthian, the more slimy it is. Corithinain is currently under federal investigation in CA for fraud. Their stock price today is $1.55/ That’s a heck of an investment!! Their case here is so speculative and risky that you really would have to be insane or very ideological to do it. As an educator & a taxpayer I oppose hustlers like those in the Parthenon Group, who are eagerly inflating the next speculation bubble with breathless sales pitches

“Now, slide 11 from the 2012 pp points out how growth in the ed industry depends on a guaranteed failure mechanism, like the CC & PARCC- the testing delivery system for generation after generation of public school turnover. :“if Common Core gets teeth the achievement gap will get bigger.” Standardized tests have by design a lowest 5% of test scores every year.

“What kind of a person celebrates humiliating children to peddle investments? Only swindlers at Parthenon can “dispassionately” recommend increasing class sizes for Knox County’s voiceless poor and disabled children.

“Leading up to the wall St crash of 2008 a lot of traders who sold their clients derivatives knew they were selling junk. These Parthenon profiteers are definitely selling time-bomb edu-investments- cash in & leave while OUR children & taxpayers pay the price. We should be skeptical and demand evidence at every turn from these hustlers. Take nothing on faith. Look under the hood.

“Their business priorities are in direct conflict with the priorities of Knox County Schools, e.g. children, parents & education professionals. Cutting costs by Increasing class sizes & disincentivize teachers in obtaining advanced degrees is not an education plan. As an educator & a taxpayer I oppose hustlers like those in the Parthenon Group denying our children the education opportunities they deserve.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit

Washington State Tribal Leaders Speak Out Against High-Stakes Testing and Standardization

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2015 //
11

Experienced teacher Kathleen Jeskey posted the statement of Washington State tribal leaders, expressing their opposition to high-stakes testing and standardization.

The photograph accompanying the post poignantly tells the story of the federal government’s historic efforts to remove native Americans from their tribal cultures and to assimilate them into the mainstream culture.

The tribal statement begins like this:

We, the governing tribes of the Washington State Tribal compact schools, hope to break the chronic cycle of failure among schools serving American Indian reservations. We intend to capitalize upon the opportunity presented by this new Tribal Compact School law by promoting the adoption of teaching practices which we believe to be more congruent with tribal cultures. In support of this effort, we intend to foster some important reforms in educational accountability methods that will encourage and reward a change in practice.

In recent decades, state and federal educational policy has focused on raising test scores for poor and minority students up to the general population average by the third grade (or soon after) in an effort to minimize the dropout rate. This policy has been a particular disaster for most public schools serving Indian reservations. The result has been a system that labels Indian children early; subjects them to continued remedial instruction; and fails to keep them engaged after the 4th grade. The over-emphasis on early grade test scores has evolved into a self-fulfilling (and self-perpetuating) prophecy of failure for Indian students. We believe it is this labeling effect, coupled with limited instructional methods that cause many if not most dropouts.

The Iroquois Sachem Canasatego once said to the English colonists of his time, “…you who are so wise must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things and you will, therefore, not take it amiss if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some Experience of it…”.

Our experience has been that our schools have diligently tried to adopt “research based” models and “data based decision making” as primary methods for school improvement for years now. For the past 15 years, federal policy has placed more and higher stakes on test results. So much weight has been placed upon them that, standardized tests have become an end unto themselves. Something must change. We do not accept that standardized testing defines the potential or truly measures the growth of our children in any meaningful way. Therefore, as sovereign tribal governments, shouldering the new responsibilities under the state compact, we feel it is our duty to make a change toward authentic assessment and accountability. If Indian students are motivated, they will succeed. It is our goal to create places where our children and young adults wish to be and where there is an inherent expectation and tradition of success.

In recent years, the state has commissioned and adopted assessments, such as the High School Proficiency Test (HSPE) and End of Course (EOC) exams, which have only served to make the student disengagement and dropout problem worse. Now, with the coming adoption of the Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBA) testing will take a quantum leap toward becoming much longer, more difficult, and demanding even greater attention. We believe that we cannot test our way to success. We have walked far enough down this path and are determined to change direction. Therefore, we are proposing a five-year moratorium from standardized testing in Tribal compact schools. During this time, we propose to develop a new evaluation paradigm based on applied learning and public demonstration. During this development period, we will use formative tests and/or other tools chosen by our staff to monitor progress and assist in teaching. We will develop a viable alternative evaluation system equaling or surpassing the rigor of state adopted testing. In addition, we will demonstrate American Indian student attendance and graduation rates that match or exceed state averages. Although intended for reservation-based districts, we hope such a system might be used by any district experiencing this chronic syndrome of failure.

It goes on from there to describe a means of teaching and learning that makes far more sense than the standardized tests that have been inflicted on every child in the nation.

Categories Standardized Testing, Students

ALEC: Vouchers for the Middle-Class, Not the Poor

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2015 //
30

The hoax is at last coming to light. Vouchers were sold as a way to “save poor black and brown kids from failing schools,” but that was always a sleight of hand. Vouchers are about privatization.

ALEC has on its current agenda a presentation titled: “entitled: “Problems in Suburbia: Why Middle-Class Students Need School Choice, Digital Learning and Better Options.”

Jonas Perrson of PR Watch writes:

School vouchers were never about helping poor, at-risk or minority students. But selling them as social mobility tickets was a useful fiction that for some twenty-five years helped rightwing ideologues and corporate backers gain bipartisan support for an ideological scheme designed to privatize public schools.

But the times they are a-changin’. Wisconsin is well on its way toward limitless voucher schools, and last month, Nevada signed into law a universal “education savings account” allowing parents to send their kids to private or religious schools, or even to home-school them—all on the taxpayers’ dime. On the federal level, a proposed amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that would have created a multi-billion-dollar-a-year voucher program was only narrowly defeated in the U.S. Senate.

ALEC is not the only organization presenting the real agenda for education:

At the American Federation for Children’s National Policy Summit held in New Orleans, lobbyist Scott Jensen—who, before being banned from Wisconsin politics for violating the public trust served as chief of staff to governor Tommy Thompson, and was a prime mover behind the first voucher program in the nation—admitted that vouchers were really all about “pursuing Milton Friedman’s free-market vision” even though the ideological agenda was nowadays sugarcoated with “a much more compelling message … of social justice.”

So what exactly was the brave new world Milton Friedman envisioned when he first floated the idea of school vouchers? While lecturing rightwing state lawmakers at a 2006 ALEC meeting, Friedman jumped at the opportunity to explain what his vision was all about. It had nothing whatsoever to do with helping “indigent” children; no, he explained to thunderous applause, vouchers were all about “abolishing the public school system.”

Categories ALEC, Privatization, Vouchers

Rachel Wolfe: A Video about the Lost Passion of Teens LINK ADDED

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2015 //
29

Rachel Wolfe made this wonderful 30-minute documentary called “Losing Ourselves.”

Losing Ourselves

Rachel is an intern at The Future Project, an education non-profit focused on bringing passion and purpose to the lives of young people, and a sophomore in Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy. She graduated a year ago from Scarsdale High School.

She writes about her film:

I’ve been reading (and loving) your blog, and I thought you might be interested in a like-minded documentary I created during my junior and senior years of high school. The documentary is called Losing Ourselves and explores how an expectation for perfection and a status-driven definition of success undermines students’ love of learning and creativity and gets in the way of our ability to use high school as an opportunity to figure out what we love and who we are. The last chapter portrays how a fifth grade classroom in which creativity is encouraged and failure is praised creates kids who are intrinsically motivated, incredibly passionate, and terrified to have their creativity educated out of them.

Categories Joy, Real Education, Students

Mercedes Schneider Reviews SBAC Test Contracts with States

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2015 //
9

Mercedes Schneider actually read the bulky contracts between states and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Her most surprising discovery:

SBAC promises: “Passing an SBAC high school summative assessment assures that students will not need remediation. SBAC really ensures college readiness!”

How do they know? When this was written into the contract, SBAC had not yet been created. Like PARCC, It was never tested.

Schneider concludes:

“This rushing to prematurely-declared success is a corporate reform hallmark.

Here we go again”

Categories Common Core, Standardized Testing

Arthur Goldstein to NYC Chancellor Farina: Thanks for Acknowledging that VAM is a SHAM

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2015 //
12

Arthur Goldstein teaches English as a Second Language students at Frances Lewis High School in Queens, New York. He blogs as NYC Educator. In his letter, Goldstein refers to a meeting that Chancellor Farina had with a local superintendent, where she recognized that highly rated teachers were likely to get lower ratings in high-poverty schools. The blogger Perdido Street School wrote: “The dirty secret of education reform is that the problems in schools and districts with high poverty/high homelessness demographics are NOT caused by “bad teachers” – they’re caused by all the effects that poverty has on the psychological, emotional, physical and social development of the children in those schools and districts.”

Arthur Goldstein writes:

Dear Chancellor Fariña:

First of all, I applaud you for acknowledging that a highly-effective rated teacher entering a troubled school may suffer a reduced rating as a result of changing schools. I very much appreciate that you’ve taken a personal interest in this teacher and plan to attach an asterisk and follow her ratings. It’s inspirational not only to me, but also to teachers nationwide, that the leader of the largest school district in the country would acknowledge that a school’s population is a major factor in teacher ratings.

This, in fact, has been a major objection many of us, including experts like Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris, have had toward value-added evaluation programs. In fact, the American Statistical Association has determined that teachers impact test scores by a factor of 1-14%. They have also determined that rating teachers by such scores may have detrimental effects on education.

I am struck by the implications of your statement. If it’s possible that a highly-rated teacher may suffer from moving to a school with low test scores, isn’t it just as likely that a poorly-rated teacher would benefit from being moved from a low-rated school to a more highly-rated one? And if, as you say, the teachers are using the same assessments in either locale, doesn’t that indicate that the test scores are determined more by students themselves as opposed to teachers?

For example, I teach beginning ESL students. Teaching these kids is one of the very best things I’ve ever done, but I now consider it a very risky business. Kids who don’t speak English tend not to achieve high scores on standardized tests. I’m sure you also know that acquiring English takes a few years, varies wildly by individual, and that it can take 5-7 years to acquire academic English. The new NYSESLAT test seems to focus on academic English rather than language acquisition. Still, it would be irresponsible of me to neglect offering basic conversation and survival skills. (In fact, NY state now requires that we offer less standalone ESL., which is neither helpful to my students nor supported by research.)

Special education children also have specific needs and disabilities that can inhibit their ability to do well on tests. It doesn’t take an expert to determine that teachers in schools with high concentrations of students with disabilities already are more likely to incur adverse ratings. Who is going to want to teach in these schools? Who will want to teach special education or ESL?

Attaching high stakes to test scores places undue pressure on high-needs kids to pass tests for which they are unsuited. For years I’ve been hearing about differentiation in instruction. I fail to see how this approach can be effectively utilized when there is no differentiation whatsoever in assessment. It’s as though we’re determined to punish both the highest needs children and their teachers.

Since the advent of high-stakes evaluations, the morale of teachers I know and represent has taken a nose dive. Teachers, regardless of ratings, are constantly asking me about their ratings, and live in fear of them, as though the Sword of Damocles were balanced over their heads. Though the Danielson rubric is heralded as objective, in practice it’s very much in the eye of the beholder. As if that were not enough, ratings are frequently altered by test score ratings. Diane Ravitch characterizes them as junk science. (I concur, and having music teachers rated by the English Regents scores of their students pushes it into the realm of the ridiculous.)

Personally, I found the older evaluation reports to be much more thorough and helpful. Supervisors used to be able to give detailed reports of what they saw, and specific suggestions on what could be improved. ThoughI can’t speak for everyone in this, I found them easier to read than the checklists we currently receive. Just like our kids, we are not widgets. We are all different, and are good or not so good on our own merits.

Of course no one wants bad teachers in front of children. The current system, though, seems to focus on student test scores rather than teacher quality. It seems to minimize teacher voice in favor of some idealized classroom that may or may not exist.

It’s a fact that test scores are directly correlated with family income and level of special needs. There is no reliable evidence that test scores are indicative of teacher quality or lack thereof. Teachers are the second-best role models for children. It’s quite difficult for us to show children that life is a thing to be treasured when we have virtual guns placed to our heads demanding higher test scores or else. Just like our kids, we are more than test scores.

On behalf of children and teachers all over New York State, I ask that you join us in demanding a research and practice-based system of evaluating not only teachers, but our students as well.

Sincerely,

Arthur Goldstein, ESL teacher, UFT chapter leader
Francis Lewis High School

Categories Accountability, English Language Learners, New York City, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Detroit Files Title Vi Complaint Against State

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2015 //
4

The powerless elected school board of Detroit has filed a Title Vi complaint against Governor Rick Snyder for discrimination against the children of Detroit.

The complaint documents the failure of state control of the Detroit public schools. For most of the past 16 years, the district has been controlled by the state. Deficits have grown, enrollment has plummeted, and the public school system is nearly destroyed.

The bottom line is that the state did nothing that succeeded in providing the children of Detroit equality of educational opportunity.

Read the complaint. It documents a history of neglect, experimentation, and destruction. The children were the victims.

Categories Detroit, Michigan

The Economist Celebrates Privatization of Schools for the Poor in Poor Nations

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2015 //
45

This may not come as a big surprise. The Economist magazine, known for its free-market perspective, supports the growth of private schools for the poor in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Did you know that Pearson, the British mega-corporation, owns a 50% stake in the Economist?

The linked article heaps praise on privately owned schools for the poor, which are proliferating throughout the poorest nations. The Economist calls them $1 a week schools.

The article says:

Powerful teachers’ unions are part of the problem. They often see jobs as hereditary sinecures, the state education budget as a revenue stream to be milked and any attempt to monitor the quality of education as an intrusion. The unions can be fearsome enemies, so governments leave them to run schools in the interests of teachers rather than pupils.

The failure of state education, combined with the shift in emerging economies from farming to jobs that need at least a modicum of education, has caused a private-school boom. According to the World Bank, across the developing world a fifth of primary-school pupils are enrolled in private schools, twice as many as 20 years ago. So many private schools are unregistered that the real figure is likely to be much higher. A census in Lagos found 12,000 private schools, four times as many as on government records. Across Nigeria 26% of primary-age children were in private schools in 2010, up from 18% in 2004. In India in 2013, 29% were, up from 19% in 2006. In Liberia and Sierra Leone around 60% and 50% respectively of secondary-school enrolments are private.
By and large, politicians and educationalists are unenthusiastic. Governments see education as the state’s job. Teachers’ unions dislike private schools because they pay less and are harder to organise in. NGOs tend to be ideologically opposed to the private sector. The UN special rapporteur on education, Kishore Singh, has said that “for-profit education should not be allowed in order to safeguard the noble cause of education”.

Very likely the teachers’ unions think that teachers should have certificates to demonstrate that they know more than their students and have some teachers training. But that doesn’t fit the budgets of the entrepreneurs.

One great thing, says the article, is that investors are flocking to add capital, in most cases expecting a profit from these low-cost schools:

First, it is bringing in money—not just from parents, but also from investors, some in search of a profit. Most private schools in the developing world are single operators that charge a few dollars a month, but chains are now emerging. Bridge International Academies, for instance, has 400 nursery and primary schools in Kenya and Uganda which teach in classrooms made from shipping containers. It plans to expand into Nigeria and India. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, Bill Gates and the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private-sector arm, are among its investors. Chains are a healthy development, because they have reputations to guard.

Another article in the same issue of The Economist also celebrates the growth of private, for-profit K-12 education in developing countries. The general thesis is that government can’t or won’t provide decent schools, and the private sector can and will and should be encouraged to take the place of government.

Most of the evidence is anecdotal or where it purports to be authoritative, the source is lacking. Nonetheless, an occasional note of skepticism creeps in.

For example:

Given the choice between a free state school where little teaching happens and a private school where their children might actually learn something, parents who can scrape together the fees will plump for the latter. In a properly functioning market, the need to attract their custom would unleash competition and over time improve quality for all. But as a paper by Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das and Asim Ijaz Khwaja published by the World Bank explains, market failures can stop that happening. Choosing a private school can be a perfectly rational personal choice, but have only a limited effect on overall results…

That means school choice can “sort” children into different types of schools: the most informed and committed parents colonise the better ones, which may then rely on their reputations to keep their position in the pecking order. Research from several parts of Africa and south Asia finds that children in low-cost private schools are from families that are better-off, get more help from parents with homework and have spent more time in pre-school. A round-up of research, much of it from south Asia, found that their pupils did better in assessments, though often only in some subjects. In the few studies that accounted for differences in family background and so on, their lead shrank.

Chile’s voucher scheme, which started in 1981 under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, aimed to enable poor students to move from bad public schools to good private ones and to raise standards by generating competition between the two. Today 38% of pupils are in state schools, 53% in private ones that accept vouchers and 7% in elite institutions that charge full fees. In the 1990s a post-Pinochet centre-left government allowed subsidised schools to charge top-up fees. They can also select their pupils by ability.

Chile does better than any other Latin American country in PISA, an international assessment of 15-year-olds in literacy, mathematics and science, suggesting a positive overall effect. But that is hardly a ringing endorsement: all the region’s countries come in the bottom third globally. And once the relatively privileged background of private-school pupils is taken into account, says Emiliana Vegas of the Inter-American Development Bank, state schools do better, especially since they serve the hardest-to-teach children.

Where private schools trounce state ones is in cost-effectiveness. A recent study in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh gave vouchers for low-cost private schools to around 6,000 randomly chosen pupils. Four years later they were compared with applicants who did not receive the vouchers. Both groups did equally well in mathematics and Telugu, the local language. But private schools had spent less time on these subjects in order to make space in the curriculum for English and science, in which their pupils did better. And spending on each pupil was only around a third that in the state sector. Lagos state spent at least $230 on each child it put through primary school between 2011 and 2013, public data suggest, around twice as much as a typical private school charges.

So, the private schools are cheaper, perhaps because they have teachers who lack credentials and training, but they don’t get better academic results.

The bottom line on The Economist articles is that they believe in competition and school choice, regardless of outcomes, because it is cost effective.

One refreshing difference between the British perspective and their American counterparts is that the Brits frankly own up to their love of privatization and their contempt for the public sector, whereas the American privatizers hide their agenda and call themselves “reformers.”

Categories International, Privatization, School Choice
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »