I have trouble thinking of K-12 education as a marketplace. But that’s just me. I know that the textbook and testing industries have their marketplaces. Now there is a new marketplace where investors hope to profit on edtech.
Apparently, Education Week now has a regular feature that showcases the latest entrepreneurial ventures, where equity investors jump in with a million here, a million there.
I suppose I should not be surprised. Edtech is the next big thing, or maybe it is the Big Thing right now, where investors see the chance of a killing.
Which reminds me that several commenters on the blog have pointed out that the most innovative education today is hands-on, doing things, making things, creating things without the aid of a computer. Low-tech is now innovative. That is sort of a hopeful sign that our children will not turn into avatars.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
An Elementary School Experience in Munich –
Observations from a Parent and Educator
By David Di Gregorio
I am a school administrator and father living in the suburbs of New York City. My son attended Boschetsrieder Strasse Schule in Munich this past July. Schools in the state of Bavaria have summer vacation in August. The welcomed my son as a guest student. He was placed in a third grade class. As he attended, I began to see a huge difference in our systems of which I would like to describe.
The school days are shorter. School began at 8:00 a.m. and ended on average at 12:30 for grades 1-4. Within this time there are two breaks. After-care programs were offered within the school. Students are served lunch, play, and are given homework time and assistance. There are no computers. Lunch is served on tables set up with real plates, knives and forks – no plastic. The day’s lunch menu was attractively written on a freestanding tent blackboard.
Nearly all students walk or ride bikes to school – most unaccompanied by parents. The school has bike racks to accommodate scooters and bikes. Every student crossed at the green – a strict rule. Within the school, there are brochures entitled “Your Child’s Way to School” giving guidance and information for parents.
On my son’s first day I accompanied him to the classroom. There were no computers, no Smart board. The classroom was spacious with minimal decoration, just a few charts and maps. There was the familiar blackboard. On the entrance door there were photos of every student in in the class with names.
My son asked if I would purchase a few things to equip him for third grade in Germany. Almost every student has a well-made “Scout” backpack manufactured by a local German company. They have hard plastic sides with sleeves inside to protect books and papers. Pouches for water and snack and reflective fabric is used for safety. They are designed to minimize strain on the back.
Within the backpack, students have two pencil cases, one orderly with rulers, erasers, a set of color pencils and other items. The second is a pouch where students can store glue, extra pencils, and other items. Within the orderly pencil case, students are required to have a child’s fountain pen with replacement cartridges. The most popular are made by Lamy, also a German company. Students use the fountain pen for writing – and there is a lot of copying from the board. I noticed a marked improvement in my son’s handwriting during our stay.
One of the textbooks used, entitled Denken und Rechnen (Thinking and Numeracy) published by Westerman, had “Bavaria” as an edition printed on the cover. Upon closer inspection I noticed maps, buildings, and other exercises reflective of the state of Bavaria. Students were not only learning math, they were learning about local geography including neighboring towns, buildings, and distances. Information appeared denser, with exercises laid out thoroughly on each page. Exercises included word problems and puzzles – one might say some exercises employed “coding” challenges. The pages were subtlety colorized.
One day my son came home and told me the class was going to have bicycle training. A small trailer supplied by the municipality filled with bikes was made available to the school. Each student, with helmet, rode through a series of cones. Students also received a lesson in bicycle safety.
During the month my son attended, he watched a total of 2 videos – one of which was a traditional televised story shown in Germany for years, Pippi Langstrumpf, and another on energy. As this was the last month of school this was more than usual.
I also learned there were many opportunities for “basteln” or tinkering where students work with their hands. This took place in art class and in the after school program.
The teacher asked me about my son’s religion and if he could attend such a class. I was surprised that this was taught in a public school and later found out schools in Germany will teach students about religion, or offer classes teaching about ethics.
In every school and public playground I never saw plastic or artificial turf. Instead a thick bed of small river pebbles provided cushioning. Each playground is different – most built from wood and other natural materials. Soccer fields are common as are sand pits for jumping and playing. Munich has an abundance of beer gardens – most have an accompanying playground for children.
My son had a fabulous experience and learned a great deal. He learned not only in class, but through the abundant opportunities for social interaction with the other children within the school setting. An American educator might call this school and it absence of technology quaint. I think there is a place for “quaint” especially in our American elementary schools. The absence of computer technology along with efficient ways of delivering instruction to students – the basics – wrapped in a shorter school day seems to work very well in a land that produces some of the finest products in the world.
In the United States, I feel we need return to deeply thought out basics in the elementary classroom. Such an elementary school in our country might be called a “boutique” school. It is the type of school I would want my son to attend.
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“they welcomed” in first paragraph – typo.
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Another error: “This shouldn’t bother me but it does.” Should read: This should bother me and it does. I’m sorry to say it so strongly about people like the ones at Edweek, but one must be pretty foul deep down to accept the idea of public school children being monetized. Antithetically, it takes a strong soul to keep belief in the power of nature, play, and cooperation. And reading paper books. Edupreneurship bothers the heck out of me, as well it should.
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that the most innovative education today is hands-on, doing things, making things, creating things without the aid of a computer.
this is what I did as a college teacher. the students loved it. ten years later, they still remember.
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Lauren,
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EdTech is not the big new thing. It is the big, old thing. By 1985 there were mail groups of K-12 teachers who understood the value of telecomputing. The history of grassroots online education is a story of the beginnings of 21st education and its demise. The Establishment finally realized what the teachers knew and took over computers in school. They dragged education back into the 19th Century.
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There’s an episode of “Welcome Back, Kotter,” from about 1977 that brings in a “teaching robot.” The kids love it for a little while, but then they lose all interest and motivation. 40 years ago, this was being dramatized, and none of our “best and brightest” seem to have learned this lesson.
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I remember teaching machines in the 50s and even used one. I have on my shelf a textbook designed to be used with one.
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The Wisconsin Journal of Education had an article in the 30s about the future classroom of the 50s with the radio as the main source of teaching.
The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
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Yes. As they said in French, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
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Education as a “marketplace” is a repulsive idea. At the core of the message is that selling products is the priority, not what is best for students. Teachers are disinterested in “emerging markets.” They are there to educate our citizenry, something our policymakers should think long and hard about. The conflict of interest should be clear to anyone with a functioning moral compass.
In keeping with the “education as marketplace” theme, I was thinking about all the violence in Chicago. I was wondering if it could be linked to the destruction of neighborhood stability. When I googled this, a little known article from the Huffington Post came up and had the same idea. I wonder if there have been violent crime spikes in other communities targeted by charters and developers? Here’s the link to the 2012 article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-woestehoff/chicago-violence-charter-schools-_b_1666630.html
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Newark is experiencing a spike in violent crime.
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I think it could be the topic of a doctoral dissertation, if there are any scholars left trying to get a legitimate Ed D or PhD.
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Thanks, I forwarded the link to this post to a Montessori teacher friend.
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One of the biggest problems with EdTech, talking K-12 that is, is America is just not ready for it. For one, not every kid has internet access at home. I know, shocking isn’t it. And number two, and maybe even a bigger issue IMO, school Technology/IT teams are not ready for it either, not even close.
I’ve worked in the K-12 IT school space for many years. Most districts only have one mission critical APP and that’s the SIS. Curriculum APPs are just an annoyance to the IT team. They’d rather just say no to APPs. They think their sole existence is to build a notwork then monitor the network. But the network exists as a vehicle to deliver APPs, that’s the only reason one needs a network. This fact seems to go right over most school district IT teams heads. I truly have no clue how these people keep their jobs. No way an IT guy can work at a law firm for instance and get away with the lackadaisical attitude a school IT staff has. He wouldn’t last three days.
I’ve worked in one district that is lead by a Broadie. This guy leads with a heavy hand, and even he cannot corral his IT team.
This will be blasphemy, but IT may be one area where a charter school can outperform a public school. I said maybe.
If I ran a school, I’ would have an executive level staff member that had a foot in both the IT world and the curriculum world withe the power to hire and fire in both departments. I’ve seen many many projects fail due to infighting between curriculum and IT departments. IT guys need to understand their job is APP delivery not deciding on a schools curriculum.
IMO, American schools are just not ready for a 1 to 1 totally digital curriculum.
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A little difficult for me to follow as a layman, let’s see if I get it: typical school IT team is focused only on perfecting the Student Information System. A wiki graphic suggests what this might mean: “An ideal state [of SIS] has complete aggregation and alignment [of student data like enrollment, grades, transcripts, test and other assessment scores, schedules, attendance et al]. It is easier to ensure that students meet challenging standards, teachers target instruction, parents know teachers are helping their children, school districts know how to allocate resources effectively, and the government knows how children are doing.”
OK, so that’s the SIS. To my mind, using such a framework to shape curriculum restricts one to a set-up like Common Core Stds/ CCS-aligned assessments e.g. PARCC. In other words, all learning defined by somebody’s list of testable skills. As seen in practice, of limited (if any) value; pretty much GIGO.
I guess this is where APPs come in, & ed-IT should just deliver APPs, not decide on a school’s curriculum. And I get the tug-of-war & inefficiencies that you describe. But does that mean the world of APPs can supply all curriculum & pedagogical needs? It’s all just out there waiting for teachers to pick & choose as each designs his ideal digitally-delivered package– after which he becomes a monitor of students online work, providing 1-on-1 assistance as needed?
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The word for it is commodification. Leadership determines what things are off limits to commodification. Aside from education, was anyone else horrified to learn that the protection of embassy personnel had been taken away from U.S. soldiers and placed in the hands of mercenaries? Commodification of military service. Our health care. Our elder care. And when you question the commodification of the education of our children, you are accused of being against the free market. These people do not understand that free citizens makes choices about what is IN the market place.
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The irony is that this is not a free market. The system grants access to big money favored players. It is all about “pay to play,” and it allows corporations to use our young people and guinea pigs for a litany of bad ideas. It is a rigged market. There is not a lot of room for ethics in the “marketplace.”
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Yes! “EdTech” is a misnomer. In fact, the word “technology” is bandied around without much precision. Companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google tout the label of “tech” companies, but the bulk of their revenue comes from advertising or selling – i.e. commodification.
Someone who goes through a “programming boot camp” won’t know the difference, but someone with extensive post-secondary studies in technology knows that technology is a tool that should be based on solid foundation of math and scientific inquiry. Otherwise, tech is nothing more than a gimmick – a cheap product sold as a quick fix akin to the thigh-masters of the ’80s.
I have never encountered any education technology that was truly innovative. I have used many programs, because many of them are convenient and students like the variety. All of these programs merely mimic the same techniques that we use as teachers without technology. They do not replace them. For example, Quizlet is a computer mimic of flashcards. Some students really like it, so okay. Different format, same technique. Edmodo mimics class discussions or written dialogue journals, but it looks like Facebook’s interface and it’s easy to post videos or pictures to it. So, again, different format, but same essential techniques — writing, dialoguing, discussing, etc. Both of those programs are free, by the way.
There is no revolutionary computer program that can teach anything that can’t be taught already by a human being or a book. Thinking and learning are free. Edtech is all about making money.
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If I may………. taking a specific high school level discipline, foreign language. The early computer programs replicated the drill and kill, pin the ending on the verb type teaching still found most commonly in our school systems. Early on, I dreamed of interactive “programs” on computers that would elicit behaviors from learners based on what they heard. So it is a question now of the chicken or the egg: do teachers use grammar-instruction (a worthless pursuit) programs b/c that’s all that’s available or do the software publishers replicate grammar-driven techniques b/c teachers demand them? The real question then is where in all that is there room for innovation?
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We recently heard about the tax avoidance schemes of silicon valley with the $14.5 billion dollar tax bill for Apple from the EU in Ireland. While silicon valley pays our representatives to gain access to public money, they avoid paying their fair share of taxes like the plague. I suspect Trump’s companies are guilty of the same manipulation, which may explain why he does not want to release any taxes. Here’ s an article from wired that explains the tax avoidance schemes. http://www.wired.com/2016/08/apple-rest-silicon-valley-avoids-tax-man/
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Don’t forget private prisons. If you want to know why we incarcerate so many more people in this country than any other industrialized country, despite statistics that show that violent crime has decreased in the US, it’s not just the “Three strikes and you’re out laws,” it’s not just the draconian “War on drugs,” it’s also because of the prison-industrial complex and the private prisons. If you have a bunch of private prisons, you have to fill them so the prison companies continue to make money.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/private-prisons-profit
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-lotke/the-real-problem-with-pri_b_8279488.html
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My grandson served time in federal, state, and private prisons. The private ones are pitiful and dangerous b/c the guards don’t know what they are doing. Makes me think of TFA.
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Pbarret, I am so sorry about your grandson. He is right, and you are right.
I’m not saying that even state and federally run prisons are all that great (they’re definitely not) but the privately run prisons are in the business of making money. Therefore, they hire poorly-trained, poorly-paid guards, they skimp on medical care and other necessary services for the prisoners, and they are just awful.
Yes, it does sound like TFA, poorly-trained teachers, doesn’t it?
You get what you pay for. At the end of the day, it’s all about profit. 😦
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Programs like Edmodo are not free. Nothing is free. You’re just giving them personal information instead of direct payment. Remember, data are worth more than gold to the entrepreneur. Better to keep to face to face interaction in the classroom, cut out the sales department, and not risk experiencing the substantial learning drop associated with tech overuse.
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Pbarret, re: for-lang-learning tech aids, an interesting question. But I think there’s a flaw in the chicken-&-egg Q. Do any such programs exist because ‘teachers demand them?’ Who listens to what teachers want? FL tech like grammar-instruction programs are ‘innovated’ by the textbook writers, no? They are just automated workbooks. I can see value-added in audio versions, gives students additional minutes in hearing spoken language, but that’s no more innovative than ’60’s language labs.
Most FL programs out there now are variations of ‘teach yourself a for lang’, of value mainly to highly-motivated adults w/2 or more languages under their belt, prepared to supplement with travel/ immersion. The way these things are used in public schools? A kids’ version is marketed to elementary schools that need to show ‘early FL instruction’. They can use that a few mins/day in the classroom. Add an occasional 15-min visit by a rotating specialist and presto cut 3 FT district positions. That’s innovation, business-style.
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Here’s a relevant bit from Eve Ewing, an public school teacher currently writing her doctoral thesis on corporate ed. reform. She appeared a year ago on a radio show debating Peter Cunningham about the situation of the the hunger strikers trying to save Chicago’s Dyett High School:
https://www.wbez.org/shows/morning-shift/dyett-hunger-strike-enters-third-week/dc2e6415-dbac-4b14-8159-8c473cb83742
—————————————–
( 10:49 – )
MODERATOR: “But I wonder again if this gets to the larger issue of this … this approach, this philosophy that’s not pretty entrenched, pretty ingrained not only in Chicago, but in other cities-”
EVE EWING: ” – of the choice -”
MODERATOR: “That I mentioned this whole idea of doing away with boundaries.”
EVE EWING: “Um. It is. It’s very much endemic in that, because that is an idea that works very well if you think of (choosing) a school like ‘a market’, and you think of parents like rational consumers.
“So the idea of choice assumes that people choose schools the way they choose cereal:
“You go the cereal aisle.
“You see what flavor you like.
“You see what, you know, what nutritional content is there,
” Then you make this choice based on your preferences, and based on the data available.
“And there’s A LOT of research that shows that that’s ACTUALLY NOT how this works AT ALL … in TWO directions:
“ONE: parents who are already disenfranchised from the school system — which is in Chicago, means predominantly black, and also, Latino and poor parents — are often unable to make informed choices. The district doesn’t always make it easy for them to make those decisions.
“For example, for a lot of these charter schools, you (parents) have to come to a mandatory informational session. You have to fill out supplementary and additional levels of applications to get your children into these schools, as well as a testing (minimum test score) cut-off.
“And (TWO): it’s also not rational form the point of view of white parents, because there’s a lot of research (that shows) that while parents will actually pull their children out of a majority students of color school, even if that school is doing well, even it it’s academically superior to a majority white school.
“So what we’re really seeing is that this ‘choice’ is NOT ‘informed choice’ AT ALL.”
———
There’s more about this radio show here: (about halfway thru the Comments section)
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That’s “school choice,” alright. The charter operators are “choosing” the students — weeding out the most expensive or most-troublesome-to-educate kids (special ed., English Language Learners, homeless, foster care kids, kids with the least-educated parents, bad behavior kids.)
And all of that is hidden behind the phony facade that proclaims that it is parents making a “free market” choice for their children, when it’s the opposite.
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A couple of comments:
First, the “business approach” to education is fundamentally based on the view that children are all alike and a standardized “production” method can be applied using high tech production systems and methods . That flies in the face of reality. Children, like all of us, are different individuals. Viewed in the business model as “raw materials,” children are far different from the raw materials used in manufacturing anything because industry uses highly refined homogeneous materials to produce each product; however, each child is composed of highly complex genes which have been further complicated and individualized by a host of unknown epigenetic factors in the child’s life. “Producing” educated children is far, far different from producing widgits.
Second, I was CEO of a division of a German multinational, and while I think that there is much about the German education system that we can emulate, there’s a fundamental element of the German system that would not fit with our nation’s egalitarian tradition: In Germany, while all children attend in common “Grundschule” through 4th grade, after 4th grade they are tracked into three basic tracks: “Hauptschule,” “Realschule,” or “Gymnasium.”
The future and fate of “Hauptschule” children is basically determined to be some sort of manual labor, and much of their future education on this track is vocational training. The “Realschule” track leads to skilled labor professions and office jobs. “Gymnasium” is university track. There is some limited opportunity for crossing over to another track, but for nearly all children their future is set after only 4th grade.
In our nation, our philosophy is that each child should be given as much opportunity to “be all that you can be,” and so each child receives that same educational opportunities, at least all the way through high school. However, I can see our egalitarian tradition ending if we continue on the march toward more and more private charter schools whose business model of operation will inevitably lead to tracking.
Germany has a world-wide reputation for manufacturing excellence and that is based on the fact that tens of thousands of its citizens are funneled into manual arts training and careers. Again, I see that in our future from the charter schools.
Our traditional egalitarian system is almost certainly inefficient because we are “wasting” time and resources on exposing many children to learning that they won’t be able to take advantage of in terms of their “productive” role in society. Nonetheless, we can never know how their lives are internally enriched by what they are taught in our traditional K-12 schools, and I think that whatever enrichment we can provide to every person’s life is well worth the “inefficiency” incurred in doing so. We are a better society and better persons for doing that.
And just think: If German had in place the educational system they have today, Einstein would probably been tracked into Hauptschule because his elementary school teachers evaluated him as “slow.” Think of what would have been lost to our world — nearly all of our high tech has in some way come from the work of Einstein and from people whose work is built upon the foundation of his discoveries — had Einstein been tracked to Hauptschule.
One thing more: The international test scores that sometimes make our high school kids look bad compared to high schoolers of other nations are sometimes an “apples-to-oranges” comparison because many nations track their students and only give those tests to their university-track students, while we give the tests to all our students. Keep that in mind when you hear someone saying that our schools are “failing” because our high school students don’t compare well in those international tests…and speak up.
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I like the looks of the Polish ed system, where tracking for college-bound & several voc tracks starts after Gymnasium (& after the PISA exam) at age 16, w/2 more yrs of schooling still reqd for diploma. The re-organization was implemented in ’99/’00. From what I read, by all ed measures it’s a success. Of course industrial sector will have to hold up its end to keep things clicking along, but it seems unemployment rates are lessening as the country slowly (like the rest of us) recovers from recession.
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There is no educational system in the world that compares to Finland. The emphasis there is on well-educated teachers, the arts, physical education, creativity. And a 15 minute recess between every class.
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Agree, Diane. And I see that Finland has upper-school (post-16y.o.) options quite similar to Poland’s. Probably other Euro ed systems too. What I admire about those systems is that voc-tech options are available without early tracking (à la Germany), & there is flexibility between voc & academic post-secondary. Meanwhile everyone needs to take a page from Finland’s overall, & esp age 6-16 program.
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As usual, Peter “CURMUDGUCATION” Greene nails it:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-free-market-does-not-work-for.html
———————————————-
EXCERPTS:
PETER GREENE:
“Why do so many charters close?
“There’s no mystery to it. Here’s a quote from the Philly charter CEO:
” ‘Kenderton is facing significant financial challenges due to a number of factors, including the school’s rising special education costs. As a result, Scholar Academies has concluded that, next school year, it is no longer able to manage the school in the best interest of kids.’
“Charters close because charter schools are businesses, and businesses close when it is not financially viable for them to stay open.
“The free market will never work for a national education system. Never. Never ever.
“A business operating in a free market will only stay in business as long as it is economically viable to do so. And it will never be economically viable to provide a service to every single customer in the country.
“All business models, either explicitly or implicitly, include decisions about which customers will NOT be served, which customers will be rejected, because in that model, those customers will be detrimental to the economic viability of the business. McDonald’s could decide to court people who like upscale filet mignons, but the kitchen equipment and training would cost a whole bunch of money that would not bring a corresponding increase in revenue, so they don’t do it.
“In a particularly apt example, FedEx and UPS do not deliver to the remoter rural areas. If you hire FedEx to deliver a package to your uncle at the end of Bogholler Road in Outer Ruralsville, what they will actually do is sub-contract the United States Post Office to finish the delivery for them.
“Note what the CEO said above.
“Special ed students are too expensive for their business model.
“When we see across the nation that charters largely avoid students with severe special needs, or English language learners, this is not because the operators of those charters are evil racist SWSN haters. It’s because it’s harder to come up with a viable business model that includes those high-cost students. Likewise, you find fewer charters in rural and small town areas for the same reason you find fewer McDonald’s in the desert– the business model is commonly to set up shop where you have the largest customer pool to fish in.”
————————
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If I have a product I want to test in your school, shouldn’t I be paying you to test it?
Especially because school attendance is mandatory and the test subjects are children.
What if we said “these children are really important to us and we don’t let just anyone in their classrooms, especially because they have so little control and we have such tight public funding parameters”
I don’t understand how this ended up framed as tech companies are doing schools a big favor by allowing them to test product. That’s just nonsense. That isn’t how this is supposed to work. Public schools are a giant market. They’re a prize. They’re not beggars pleading with the Best and Brightest for their attention. It works the other way. They have to vie to be worthy to enter.
At the very least the same companies who will realize huge profits should provide the devices- the hardware- free. That;s the LEAST schools should demand for access to this market.
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Jersey Jazzman also nails it on this topic:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-sick-consequences-of-competition-in.html
—————–
JERSEY JAZZMAN:
“Thursday, August 25, 2016
“The Sick Consequences of “Competition” in Education
“ADDING: Big props to @pippi longstocking for guiding me to this story.
“There are two ways to get you to buy my product:
Convince you my product is good.
Convince you the other guy’s product sucks.
“Sure, there are plenty of companies that base their marketing strategy around a positive message. But if my product isn’t really that good to begin with, it’s going to be hard to convince you to fork over some cash for my stuff. It’s probably easier, and more effective, to just bad-mouth my rivals.
“Now, we are currently living in the golden age of competition in public education. Milton Friedman’s dream of pubic schools having to compete for students has finally come true. Which means charter schools have to go out and make their case for enrollment, either by extolling their virtues, or by denigrating the public schools with which they compete.
“The problem is that when you’re opening a brand new charter school, it’s hard to prove to people you’re better than the local public school district — the same school system that has been at the heart of the community for generations. The same district that brings America Friday night football games and kindergarten Halloween parades and high school spring musicals and all the other traditions tightly tied to our nation’s identity.
“That pretty much leaves you only one choice:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-sick-consequences-of-competition-in.html
This is an actual mailer sent to families in the Bethlehem, PA area, recruiting for the Innovative Arts Academy Charter School. Sara K. Satullo, reporting for lehighvalleylive.com, picks up the story:
– – – – – – – – –
“A promotional mailer claiming to be from a new Catasauqua charter school paints Liberty High School students as drug users, sparking outrage among many Bethlehem residents.
“Innovative Arts Academy Charter School denies it had anything to do with sending out the promotional mailer, which lists the school’s return address.
“The postcard references the September 2015 drug arrest of a 17-year-old Liberty student and asks “Why worry about this type of student at school? Come visit Arts Academy Charter School. Now enrolling grades 6-12.”
“It shows a stock image of a teenager holding their head in their hands and reprints a Morning Call headline: ‘Teen busted by Liberty HS officials with more than $3,000 of heroin, cocaine.’
“Photos of the mailer spread quickly on Facebook and Twitter and led some to share their disgust. [emphasis mine]
– – – – – – – – –
“Drugs are a serious problem in America’s schools, no question. Of course, about five minutes on Google will probably give you all the examples you need of drug busts in affluent, ‘nice’ schools, including private schools. But they aren’t the ones competing with charters (yet).”
———
… and on it goes.
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Yes, it should bother you and I am glad it does!
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Oh, and here’s an anecdote from my own experience (from Spring 2015):
On a rare rainy morning in Spring 2015, an announcement was made that we were to take our students inside to our classroom at 7:00 am, an hour earlier than usual (an unpaid extra hour of supervision / work, but hey, who’s complaining?😉 )
While I was sitting drinking my coffee, with the sound of rain outside the window, one of my female fifth-grade students was talking to the other students present about a charter school presentation that she and her mother had just attended the night before. They attended this meeting in pursuit of information they would use to decide which school she will attend in Fall 2015:
… the traditional public middle school that our school feeds into,
or
… the charter middle school whose presentation they attended.
This is a school that is competing with the traditional school for students.
Given my obvious interest in the issue — no, really Jack? — my ears pricked up at this.
My student then began recounting what she and her mother were told by the charter folks. The traditional middle school was to be avoided at all costs, as it is a hotbed of academic failure.. “They say that ____ is ‘a failure factory.’ ”
I then heard the same dumb-ass, word-for-word cliche I’d heard countless times before:
“If you go to ___ Middle School, you have a 1% chance of going to college. If you got to Acme Charter Inc. School, you’ll have a 99% of going to college.” (This asinine and bogus one-liner was also used almost verbatim by Holly Hunter’s character in the corporate ed. reform propaganda film WON’T BACK DOWN… these reformista idiots—including their screenwriters—all apparently read and quote from the same playbook, obviously.)
Audible groan from me, then shaking my head, rolling my eyes… knowing this to be total bullsh#%, as I had knew of countless former students of mind and others who attended our traditional public middle school and went on to complete college. I also had friends who taught at ____ Middle School, so I was angry on their behalf as well. Furthermore, this particular charter school in question had just started up, and thus had no such 99% college-attendance record about which they can make such impressive boasts, nor did the charter school world in general have any such data to justify such boasts … if that’s what the recruiter was trying to claim
However, things then got really ugly. My student then started talking about how _____ Middle School was embroiled in gang violence… shootings… stabbings, and… I’m not kidding here… rapes, etc. If you go there, she insisted, you might get shot or stabbed or even… raped.
This was a then-ten-year-old girl — her birthday was last summer — recounting this. Think about the sick mind and absent morals of a highly-paid charter recruiter that would put “rape” into the minds of ten-year-old children.
Chew on that for a while.
I then spoke up and interrupted this entertaining colloquy. “Kids, I’m sorry, but I HAVE to say something here. None of what (FEMALE STUDENT’s NAME) was told by the charter people last night is even remotely true. It’s all lies. All of it.” I continued in this vein for a bit, then had an idea. “Say, I have friends who’ve taught at that school for decades. What say, we call up one of ’em, and here what that teacher has to say? Good idea?”
I then whipped open my cell phone, dialed, and waited for an answer:
“Hi, (NAME), it’s Jack here … yeah, it’s good talk to you, too … Fine.. how are you? … Great … ” Eventually, I got around to my point in calling, ”
“Look ____, I’m trying to find out some information about your school for my students who are right her with me… First of all, how long have you taught at ___ ?”
I put the phone on speaker mode, then held up the phone to the students.
“23 years.”
“In your time at ___ Middle School, has there ever been a shooting or stabbing?”
“No. Of course not.”
“No.”
“Is your school full of gang members terrorizing your students?”
“No,” he replied, audibly laughing.
“In your 23 years at ____, has any student ever been raped, or sexually assaulted, or even sexually touched in any way?”
“Oh, no. Absolutely not. Where’d you hear this nonsense?”
“It doesn’t matter … Now, as someone’s whose tight with both your school’s teacher’s union leader and with the principal, and as someone who’s heavily involved in what goes on in that school, you would know if such a thing had ever happened. Like this could not have occurred, with you not finding out about it? Correct?”
“Sure.”
“In 23 years, have you EVER encountered a gang member who attended school there… even just one?
“No … if there was, he or she kept it a secret. Gangs are like a total non-issue here.”
“Thanks for talking to me, ____. I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”
The room went dead silent at the sound of my cheap old phone clapping shut.
I had a hard time concentrating that day while I taught, I was so incensed.
After school that day, I went to the Main Office at ____ Charter Middle School, and asked to speak to one of the administrators. A nice enough and very young (mid-to-late 20’s) woman then came out to talk to me across the counter. I introduced myself as a 5th grade teacher from ____ . I mentioned that that some of my students might be attending her school next year.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she replied, a little surprised and curious as to why I was there… after all, I’m an evil union member setting foot on non-union turf.
With a serious expression, I then told her about her school’s forum that one of my students attended the night before, and the disturbing things that one of her school’s marketers told this student and her mother, and that he also told all the other people attending this fourm.
She became visibly uncomfortable, and didn’t want to talk about this, “Look Mr. Covey, that’s not my area of responsibility at our school. I’m not involved in any of our school’s outreach or recruiting, so I’m sorry, but I really can’t speak to any of that.”
“Okay, well then let me just ask you: do you approve of what I just described, of what your marketers said and did last night? I mean YOU, personally, _____. Do YOU approve of that?”
“Sir, I’m not discussing this … Sorry.”
“Well, fine, then let me finish with this. I want you to pass on to your people that I’m seriously considering going to the LAUSD and to the Los Angeles Times, or to the where-the-hell-ever I can think of to report this.
“Let’s just take the ‘rape’ thing. First of all, that’s a slanderous and easily disproven lie.
“Secondly, and most importantly, what your recruiter did last night was child abuse… emotional, mental, psychological abuse of a child… in this case, a child for whose well-being I’m responsible. So I take this seriously, ____, and if you give a sh#% about children, you should, too. For someone connected with your school to put such baseless and traumatizing images in the mind of ten- and eleven-year old girls is utterly reprehensible and sick. Sweet Jesus, have you people no sense of decency? Is there NOTHING you won’t do… no sleazy tactic you won’t stoop to… no vile behavior that you folks won’t engage in to lure students to your school? Let me tell you. This better not happen again. You got it?”
She nodded, and I left the building … feeling a little better, but still unsafisfied.
I’ve told this story privately many times, but not publicly… until now, that is.
By the way, to the best of my knowledge, all my then-students went to the traditional middle school. Furthermore, I have no beef with the teachers at this charter school — they’re all my brothers and sisters, I like so say. Indeed, I’m currently heavily involved in helping them form a union at this school and the other schools in its chain. Those teachers are doing so, in the face of opposition from a highly-paid union suppression organization — the same one used by Walmart, and connected with the Broad-funded California Charter Schools Association — that is every bit as evil and as amoral as the charter school recruiter described above.
But that’s another story.
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Then this should bother you more , No it wont because we already knew it. Sent to me by a NY Trade union activist/ leader. I guess the secrete is out we are all under assault,by the same forces.
http://fair.org/home/this-guardian-piece-touting-bill-gates-education-investment-brought-to-you-by-bill-gates/
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Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
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It SHOULD bother you, Diane, as well as all the rest of us who care more about children, our country’s assets and the public good than the almighty dollar.
It’s precisely because of this shift to accepting Gordon Gekko’s pronouncement that “greed is good,” ever since the Reagan era, and condoned by Democrats alike, that we have become a nation that is run by the 1%, in a new gilded age, where everything is seen as marketable and monetized in order to benefit business over the people.
This is what the Obama administration has been doing across the board and it needs to stop: Sign to Tell President Obama: Stop Auctioning off Public Waters and Lands! http://www.signforgood.com/keepitintheground/
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Here’s another debunking of the “let’s turn schools into a free market” idea:
http://www.progressive.org/pss/10-things-know-about-charter-school-debate
It lists 10 Things. Here are five of them:
————————————
JULIAN VASQUEZ-HEILIG:
— School “choice” does not cure the inequality created by markets.
Not surprisingly, the academics neglected to mention that market-based mechanisms are the very system that created the inequities in American public schools today. Along with other public policies, including redlining, market forces created racial and economic segregation. Instead of making this situation better, school choice made this situation worse.
A group of Chilean economists mentored by Friedman, the Chicago Boys, took Friedman’s theories about education back to their home country and to push an education system with universal choice and relaxed regulation and oversight. Over the past several decades, Chile simultaneously became one of the richest countries in South America and the most unequal developed country in the world.
———-
— Why is more oversight and accountability needed for charters?
Proponents of more accountability for charter schools want parents to be able to choose from high-quality public schools. Instead, charter schools have the power to selectively choose students who will perform well. Charter supporters blame a few bad apple charters for expelling too many students.
But charter school supporters and their lobbyists consistently support laws that promote lax oversight and regulation. For example, the California Charter School Association has actively lobbied against data collection and accountability for punitive and exclusionary school discipline and teacher turnover in charter schools.
————
— The position of the NAACP and Black Lives Matter on privatization is consistent with the views of past civil rights leaders.
NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois, in his essay Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the U.S., extolled the virtues of collaborative social and government action. He railed against the role of businesses and capitalistic control that “usurp government” and made the “throttling of democracy and distortion of education and failure of justice widespread.”
Malcolm X characterized market-based public policy as “vulturistic” and “bloodsucking.” He advocated for collaborative social systems to solve problems.
Martin Luther King Jr. argued that we often have socialism in public policy for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor. King and Malcolm X would have recognized the current patterns we see of charters located primarily in urban and poor areas rather than wealthy suburban enclaves.
White academics pressing for market-based school choice in the name of “civil rights” ignore this history of African American civil rights leaders advocating for collaborative systems of social support and distrusting “free market” policies.
———-
Do families actually choose charter schools?
Probably the most prominent argument heard from market-based education proponents is that school choice means that families can choose their own schools. Proponents of market-based school choice have argued that charter schools were designed to have both more freedom and more accountability. Critics of privately-managed schools point out that charters are actually afforded less accountability. For example, a recent report released by the ACLU and Public Advocates found a variety of illegal exclusionary policies in more than 20 percent of charter schools they examined. The New York Times has described the reality of school choice for parents in Detroit as “no good choice.”
———-
Do charters perform better than public schools?
Charter proponents often cite studies produced by The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. CREDO studies are not peer reviewed. But charter school supporters and the media point to CREDO’s 2015 urban charter study to say that African American and Latino students have more success in charter schools. Leaving aside the integrity of the study, what charter proponents don’t mention is that the performance impact is .008 and .05 for Latinos and African Americans in charter schools, respectively. These numbers are larger than zero, but you need a magnifying glass to see them.
Contrast that outcome with policies such as pre-K and class size reduction with far more unequivocal measures of success than charter schools.
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The Education Industry Association, started in 1990, has merged with the EdTech Association. That was about a year ago, so this is a huge lobby with savvy in how to increase profits. One of the biggest sources of profits is USDE where there is black hole of failed software, but still active contracts to the same companies.
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I want to say computers and technology are not the enemy any more than charter schools are. The enemy are capitalists and neo-liberals who hijack technology and charter schools for their own benefit. I don’t know how to fight them successfully, but I think it would help to focus on the enemy. Metron ariston. Measure is best.
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