Marc Tucker, CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, wonders whether the Republicans have completely abandoned public education.
Trump’s education plan, announced earlier this week, shows that the answer is a loud “YES.” He wants to redirect $20 billion in federal education spending to states as a block grant for charters and vouchers.
Tucker remembers when public schools were not a partisan issue. They had strong support by both parties both locally and nationally.
Republican civic leaders proudly served on local and state school boards.
But now the rhetoric of the fringe right has come to typify Republican rhetoric.
Marc thinks this might be a temporary aberration.
I hope he is right. I think the Republican party has become the party of privatization.
What bothers me is that there are Democrats like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Dannell Malloy of Connecticut who echo the pro-privatization views of the Republicans. Worse, no President has done more to advance privatization than President Obama.
The only way this situation will change is if voters let their representatives know that they want better public schools, not privatization. About 6% of children are in charter schools. A minuscule number receive vouchers. About 9-10% attend independent and religious schools. At least 85% of all children are enrolled in public schools. Their parents should raise a ruckus and force the politicians to stop defunding their schools and stop diverting public money to privatization.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What the Republicans haven’t abandoned is policies that make money for their paymasters. All of the rest has been jettisoned.
Not only do the Republicans want to privatize education but also Social Security (Bush tried in 2005), Medicare and Medicaid. At least most Democrats are not for privatizing these 3 important and crucial programs. Yes, Obama did set up that deplorable Simpson-Bowles cat food committee but it flopped because there were enough liberals on the committee to thwart the destruction of Social Security. Bottom line, Obama did not push for the privatization of SS or Medicare and Medicaid. Romney/Ryan would have pushed for privatization and voucherization of these programs.
Obama nearly sold out Social Security in the budget talks. He is Republican-lite.
Why didn’t he succeed?
A better question moving forward is will Democrats win.
Could we please understand that privatizing Social Security is a bi-partisan endeavor? If it were not for a stain on a blue dress, Bill Clinton would have accomplished it. God bless Monica Lewinsky.
Democrats seem to sigh and accept it as inevitable Social Security must be slowly dismantled, and pensions must be turned into Wall Street 401ks.. Instead they should be fighting to ensure funding and solvency and not cower to the 1%. I have yet to see any Democrat step up with the fire and passion of Sanders. And he’s technically not a Democrat.
As far as the number of children in charter or private schools, they’re probably relying on the fact that in the places they parachute into, charter market share is much larger- Trump went to Cleveland- more than 5% of children attend charters in Cleveland.
Detroit is about 40%, DC is (I think) 50%, New Orleans is 100%- etc.
Trump specifically lauded a for-profit operator in Cleveland, which is amusing. There’s ordinarily no mention of the for-profit operators. He’s probably not savvy enough to know he’s supposed to ignore the “man behind the curtain” 🙂
Privatization will destroy smaller districts. They simply can’t take the hit- they don’t have the numbers to maintain both a public system and a privatized system. They’ll end up with two weaker systems- no one will “win”. It’s a shame that there’s little or no discussion of the existing public schools in ed reform. They simply don’t care what happens to them.
The consistent omission with ed reform politicians is public schools. They offer nothing to existing schools, and then expect people to cheer them when they parachute in with ed reform plans. Why would people who value their existing schools welcome that?
I think they are so deep into this “movement”, so ensconced in the echo chamber, that they don’t even realize they offer nothing positive for public schools.
You cannot FIND a positive mention of any public school on some of these ed reform sites. They’ll have 5 pieces in the “front page” and 4 of them will be charter cheerleading and the 5th will be a piece criticizing a public system. The Obama Administration is the same way. It’s ALL negative for public schools, ALL positive for charter schools.
I don’t think they see the bias. Why would they? They only talk to fellow members of “the movement”.
I can go to the Ohio Dept of Ed site right now and it will be a litany of required measurements and mandates for public schools. That’s it. It’s relentlessly grim. I can then contrast that with state lawmakers cheerleading charters and vouchers- that’s ALL positive. I;m sick of it. I’m tired of paying public employees who don’t support public schools.
First, the privatization movement is only a “temporary aberration” if the billionaires who want to control the U.S. Government (and the world?) with their money are only a “temporary aberration.” Privatization becomes the mantra when those billionaires think (1) they can make money on it, plus have a non-profit to wash their tax-free money through; and to sell their services to, sort of like the mob; (2) that having money equates to having class; (3) that the rest of us are all losers and slackers, stupid people who are just unlucky or undeserving, who just want free stuff, and who are lazy and don’t want to work; or (4) really want to make a better world but are ignorant about how destructive it is to a democracy to interject themselves into the body politic by buying politicians and privatizing everything. (I don’t have that list of people under (4), but my guess is there are at least one or two on their way to being oligarchs.)
Second, privatization of services that are essential to the maintenance of a vibrant democracy, like education, is STEP TWO in a THREE STEP PROCESS.
STEP (1) deprive those services of funds and resources, screw up the curriculum, and set up the conditions for teachers to run around as if their hair were on fire so that everyone will agree that public schools are horrible.
STEP (2) privatization.
STEP (3) (a) make those services into a set of corporate servers and entrepreneurial indoctrination centers, and be sure to get rid of students who cannot “make the grade;” along with parents who complain; or (3) (b) get rid of these services altogether because they are “not profitable.”
Third, as long as Fox News and other right-wing and billionaire-funded “news” services have the collective ear of over 50 percent of the people, nothing will change.
I wonder if we began to lose the value of public schools when civics classes were no longer considered de rigueur. Courses in American history and tests on state and national constitutions took the place of training in what it means to be a citizen and even student government has become passe. I loved studying American history, but it didn’t really instill in me the importance of being involved in even local government. If Democracy is government of, for, and by the people, then we damn well better get our act together and fight for it. After all, if all we are supposed to do is train the next generation of worker bees, is it really necessary that education be viewed as a public duty?
Hello 2old2teach: I think yes, at least in part, that the loss of a formal education in history and politics (whatever we call it) is central to how a good number of our present “WE” too-easily miss the deeper political meaning that seemingly-surface changes portend. To be clear, a surface privatization may seem okay and even good for children in some cases and at least temporarily; but it breaks the deep-set bonds between the people and their public institutions that are built on a foundation of ideas, namely, of democracy, commonwealth, the rule of law, openness, public spaces and all of the battered freedoms we still do enjoy.
I’ve seen that loss of consciousness everywhere and most conspicuously and sadly in teachers themselves. I taught in a master program in education in a CA university for several years. My students were mostly already K-12 teachers. Most knew little or nothing about history or the political ground that they and their public schools already stand on. And without that political/historical education, teachers can only pass down ignorance by omission to their own students.
My take on it is that, because democracy is not an ideology to be taught like other ideologies (it’s an experiment), most just take their own political foundations for granted; and then don’t or even can’t recognize the signs of its corrosion and loss–signs that are so obvious NOW to those who study even a little bit of history. In fascist terms, such teachers and their students live in the culture as members of one of the outer circles. And people who come from other cultures, and who have breathed all sorts of political “air,” commonly have a much greater understanding and appreciation of just what it is we have–now there’s an irony for you, considering how some on the right feel about “foreigners”?
One piece of evidence of the political/historical myopia many Americans are in is when (as in West Virginia and the Koch-owned paper company) the local people are getting cancer and having other symptoms of chemical poisoning; they have high suspicions about the paper company’s waste processes, as exposed by a whistle blower, but yet they hate government regulations, e.g., from the EPA and the Justice Dept. And then there is the attempt to privatize Social Security. I hate government, they say, but don’t take my Social Security. Then there is the weather disasters and the call for government help by Republican governors.
My guess is that some are really wising-up? And my guess is that Trump will finally become a true victim of his own ignorance, especially where the Russia thing is concerned. Even Bill O’Reilly from Fox complained about that. But I’m still not sure that Hilary or others in the Democratic Party really understand the depth of the problem–as some here have suggested in the last few days. I guess we’ll have to wait and see and keep watching “the Trump Show.”
The Democrats seemed to have abandoned public education, too.
And at no time during his campaign did Bernie Sanders make public education and its targeted destruction an issue. He could have moved the Dems to the left just like he moved them to the left on other issues, but apparently it wasn’t very important to him. We already know the Obama administration would throw public schools under a bus as fast as they would social security if they thought they could get away with it.
The notion of “competition” improving services is turned on its head when only one side has to play by fair rules. And everyone buys into that UNTIL it turns out they have the kid who has cancer and who gets dropped by the cheap insurance company they thought was so good when it turns out his cancer isn’t cured with basic, cheap treatment. Oh, I guess maybe that insurance wasn’t so good, but don’t worry, your kid is expendable and who cares what happens to him because all those other healthy kids are enjoying their cheap insurance. Shouldn’t that be enough for you to know that your child’s demise helped us keep costs down so they could do well? Isn’t that the “American” way now?
As a senator from Vermont, I don’t think Bernie internalized the same sense of urgency that many educators feel. It’s harder to understand the importance of an issue that does not have the same level of angst attached to it in your immediate environment. Vermont is far from the ideal state to drive a discussion on the problems facing public education. He probably did not have constituents loading his email with complaints about public education.
2old2teach,
There is no excuse for Bernie being so ignorant about the issue. Public education is important. It’s actually even more important than giving free college to everyone, one of Bernie’s ideas I found least thought out and most pandering. (He still had my vote, but with reservations.) And the national charter/privatization movement should have been on his radar as a US Senator.
I also noticed a headline that said Elizabeth Warren hasn’t made up her mind about the Massachusetts charter cap yet. It’s astonishing that the Senators who should be fighting most vehemently for public education are so casual. Something is wrong when the politicians who should be the most supportive seem to barely care.
No excuse for Bernie intended, just possible explanation. Same with Elizabeth Warren; I imagine that education policy, K-12, is far down her list of concerns given her expertise. The ed reform crowd has been much more effective at lobbying, especially in the DC echo chamber. Sanders and Warren don’t have to totally buy the reform mantra to at least find some of it reasonable.
Are ed reformers looking at the Wells Fargo example and maybe reconsidering employee bonuses to bring up numbers?
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-phony-accounts-bank-fees/
“On Thursday, federal regulators said Wells Fargo (WFC) employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts — without their customers knowing it — since 2011.
The phony accounts earned the bank unwarranted fees and allowed Wells Fargo employees to boost their sales figures and make more money”
They took these ed reform schemes from the private sector. Was that a mistake? If it doesn’t work in the private sector why would it work in public schools?
Can the Obama Administration explain why they believe this is a good idea?
The GOP has not only abandoned public education, as have most Democrats, but they have abandoned all aspects of the average, ordinary working class person in favor of monied interests.
The GOP and neo-liberal Democrats wish to turn America back into Edwardian England, and they have been quite successful in marching upon the path that leads directly there.
The two party system has become a mass of zealous worshipers, and ALEC is their new God.
“The Cleveland charter school, used as a backdrop for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s policy speech on education, recently got a failing grade in student growth from the state of Ohio.
The Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy scored an F on the most recent state report card. The school, run by a for-profit company, scored worse than the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, which got a C.
But charter school proponents argue that metric only tells part of the story. The non-profit Village Prep in Cleveland also got an F in student growth, but founder John Zitzner said parents should judge for themselves, tour the school of their choosing, and look at a variety of metrics.”
Ed reformers THEMSELVES don’t believe this A-F system they created is valid. Why did we spend tens of millions of dollars on it? Because Jeb Bush’s lobbying firm pushed it?
If ed reform is all about “parent choice” why didn’t they just say that? We could have saved millions of dollars and public schools wouldn’t have to comply with unfunded mandates from ed reformers.
These metrics don’t mean anything. The minute charter schools score poorly they change the argument and go to “choice”. Why don’t they admit the point of this “movement” is to privatize public systems? They prefer charter schools.
Democrats like Cuomo are another fringe called neo-liberals. Obama is a neo-liberal. Duncan is a neo-liberal.
These extremists have support from too many billionaires and with this money have leveraged too much power when compared to their actual numbers.
They are the political equal of Marburg virus. A virus is small but can create great suffering and loss of life.
Does anyone know how we eradicate this Marburg virus?
The Guardian published “Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems”
“Financial meltdowns, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
Unfortunately, we continue to stagger blindly down the “road to serfdom,” while the neo-liberals continue to privatize and exploit everything they can grab. As long as the typical citizen is unaware, this trend will continue, especially since Silicon Valley and hedge funds managers have so much money.
Trump earlier had said he would dissolve the DOE. Now, he says he will decimate public schools. Trump has no experience in politics, short of donation to politicians. The usual republicans in the background would be directing a Trump precedency should that come to fruition, meanwhile everything he has said since day 1 of his campaign, whatever it was that appealed to his base supporters, means nothing and, perhaps his turnabout will turn them off. Trump wouldn’t be running the country; the usual suspects would be running the country. Either way, disaster, not only for education.