Allison Collins lives in the Bay Area and blogs about education. She has written an insightful post about the winners of the phony claim that American education is “broken” and “failing.”
Sure, there are problems, but American public education has been at the center of our national success, and we are now witnessing a determined effort to tear it down.
Why? Who benefits?
She writes:
There are some strong public schools and some that struggle. But talking about our entire public school system like it’s Armageddon is overblown, and does a great disservice to the many dedicated students, families and teachers that pour their time, money and love into our schools. More than anything, this harmful narrative seems to target urban public schools serving low-income, Black and Brown youth. There are hundreds of tiny miracles happening in our urban public schools each day that never get media attention. It’s time we analyzed why the “failing public schools” narrative is so pervasive nowadays. Who benefits when public schools fail?….
The multi-million dollar charter industry relies on the perception that charters are private school “lite” with a public school price. The best way for charters to differentiate themselves from traditional public schools is by selling themselves as the free-market (read: better) alternative to public schools which proponents paint as “bureaucratic” and “inefficient”. Most often, charters sell the idea that they offer specialized curriculum or enhanced instruction that can’t be provided in “failing” schools by veteran teachers. Teachers in charters are painted as spunky, innovative, dedicated in contrast to the old, burnt-out, “impossible to fire” teachers they say are the problem with public schools. (Stay tuned for more on this topic. As you can see, I’m just getting started!)…
Private and charter schools aren’t the only ones who thrive on trashing public schools. Profitable non-profits include: education think-tanks, curriculum developers, test creators and educational software developers who are always ready to jump in and provide a “quick fix”…..
“What’s wrong with urban public schools? We’ll tell you for just three easy payments of $19.95 … MILLION!” “Want to learn how to turn around your achievement gap? Hire our team of curriculum consultants and TFA wunderkind and we’ll save the day!” Talking about failing public schools is a real bummer, but MAN it really moves product!
Hysteria over our “broken system” has gotten so crazy that non-profits often serve as brokers and middlemen for billionaire funders like Bill Gates who favor investing in outsiders over districts who they fear will mismanage implementation. Yet, when dollars flow to non-profits to supplant the leadership in a district, it undermines rather than supports. The overall message to educators is, “We don’t think you can do it yourself… so we’ll do it for you.”.
If you want to help a district function effectively, you work with leaders to fix underlying problems, you don’t create workarounds or do the work. In this way, non-profits enable failure. They become complicit in creating and maintaining problems they then profit by fixing.
And then there are what she calls the “Chardonnay Liberals.”
But read it to learn why they benefit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What I love is how the narrative changes on a dime when they’re promoting a specific ed reform or ed reformer 🙂
Read ed reform sites. It’s educational. There is a consistent droning narrative of failing schools UNTIL one of their policies or people must be promoted. Then we get “common core test scores are up! high school graduation is up!”
I get whiplash. There’s practically a cottage industry bashing Chicago Public Schools (for example) but when that narrative becomes inconvenient for the promotion of Arne Duncan or Rahm Emanuel it disappears and is replaced with “winning!”
The following day they’ll be back to “crumbling prisons”.
The contradiction exists for a very good reason. Ed reformers sold this as “improving public schools” and they’ve been running things for two 2-term Presidents. At some point even the echo chamber realizes bashing public schools reflects on ed reform.
Detroit is another good example. Eli Broad personally reformed Detroit. The place is lousy with “choice”. Yet 20 years later public schools are still the problem. Milwaukee is another. These cities were reformed! They have “choice” out the wazoo. That’s ignored because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
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All should read the link. Excellent post by A. Collins. From the post, simple but well-stated:
“Public education isn’t a commodity, it’s a basic human right. It’s time to stop treating families like “consumers” and stop letting snake-oil salesman selling us lies about our schools.
The truth is, our public education system is not any worse off than it was 50 years ago. In fact public schools are doing better than their competition.
Really.”
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I heard an ad for a ed tech product on local Michigan radio yesterday. They’re promoting the product to parents by telling parents public schools are using it. It’s 100% canned online content- soup to nuts. You don’t need a teacher other than to monitor the child while he or she clicks thru the program.
I knew it would happen and ed reformers should have foreseen it happening.
Let the giant sales job begin! The ed tech bubble is just being inflated and the crash will be spectacular
WILDLY irresponsible behavior from “the adults”.
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Simple reason: $$$$
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Dwayne, what’s even worse is that not only are children considered consumers, they are basically used as consumables.
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Exactly flos56!
And folks wonder why I write so stridently against and condemn in the most harshest terms those who implement the educational malpractices, the ones that should know better, the GAGA Good German administrators and teachers.
I have posted this before and it still holds true and always will be true:
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
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Can someone tell the specific date that ed reform becomes accountable for public schools?
When would that be? It’s been 20 years they’ve been pushing market-based reform. They’ve completely captured DC and the majority of statehouses.
2020? After President Clinton follows this agenda lockstep like President Bush and President Obama did? 2050? Never?
When do the results of this national experiment reflect not on the ordinary people working in public schools but instead on the elite group of people who conducted the experiment?
Why does “accountability” only work one way in this country? Why does it only trickle DOWN? Should I tell my 8th grade son that we hold only lower level people “accountable” in this country so he better make sure he’s in the top tier? Is it just plain truth to warn him that this thing is rigged?
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I have a similar question: when do the “reformers” become responsible for the dreaded “status quo” that they keep raising like the boogeyman? After 20 years, aren’t THEY the “status quo?”
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“Reform” is a dishonest distraction away from true harm, with an offering of market solutions for a symptom-not ideas for a curehttp://theeducatorsroom.com/2016/08/parents-rights-really/
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Let’s not forget the role that government has played in trashing and undermining public education. Starting with our president and his commissioners of education and working our way down to numerous governors, mayors and other state representatives have been clearing a path for the privateers. Governors from both red and blue states continue to slash public education budgets despite an improved economy. Too many of our representatives have been working in tandem with privateers as they collect campaign funds for selling out democracy. The only thing that bothers them more than an empty war chest is the potential loss of their power grab seat. Pro-public educators, parents and concerned citizens must continue to be informed and vote these corrupt opportunists out.
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Agreed
But on a single issue are the numbers there to vote them out? The assault on Public education is part of a larger assault. The narrative of failure a convenient myth, that covers up economic policy, that redistributes wealth to its desired recipients. As such to “vote the opportunists out” one must be part of a larger movement.
“Chardonnay Liberals.” by what metric are they Liberal . I will say it again “Compassionate Conservatives” are not Liberals. Being on the right side of the culture wars does not make one a liberal. What social issue was on Roosevelt’s (either one’s)plate. Or for that matter LBJ’s plate,civil rights above all was an economic issue. As Slick Willie’s ad said “its the economy stupid”.
If one views the education wars as an economic war with victory being the maintenance or expansion of power/wealth than one can have a much broader base to fight back with.
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Ultimately, parents choose charter schools over public schools so their kids don’t have to associate with the “riff raff” of the public schools and be exposed to inappropriate behaviors (read those minority kids).
It’s like attending private schools without the tuition.
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EXACTLY what the charters in my area do! The education is sub-par, and parents complain of the constant turn-over of teachers in the charters, but don’t even consider moving their kids into the superior public schools, because then their children will have to associate with “those children.”
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Excellent account of the issues and the narrative of failure and incompetence starting big time with A Nation at Risk and continuing with No Child Left Behind, a version of asserting teachers are uncaring and neglectful. Now we have Every Child Succeeds with the same emphasis on testing and stack ratings that, by design, perpetuate a narrative of public school failure for not meeting any of the very arbitrary measures of “success” embedded in that law. I am glad that Diane Ravitch is recirculating this post.
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A quote from a Philanthropy Roundtable interview (Stanford grad., living in the Bay area, who rec’d $22 mil. from Gates, for the New Schools Venture Fund), NSVF’s “marching orders…to develop diverse charter school organizations that produce different brands on a large scale.”
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