Nancy E. Bailey writes here about the corporate reformers’ love for the term “Dropout Factories” to refer to public schools, especially those in impoverished communities.
She says the term is used to disparage public schools and their teachers. It received wide recognition when it was featured in the abominable pro-privatization film “Waiting for Superman.”
Bailey offers a list of research-based strategies for improving struggling schools, which are almost invariably schools with high proportions of students who live in poverty.
She notes that the originator of the term Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins has close ties to the reformer industry.
A valuable and informative post.
P.S. Nancy Bailey and I are updating the Edspeak glossary and thank readers for their many wonderful suggestions. “Dropout Factories” will definitely be an addition!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There’s an element of patronizing judgement to that term and perspective. College-educated, affluent adults telling lower income, non-college educated families how to educate their kids. And interestingly enough, the advice doesn’t always reflect how the college-educated would raise their own kids.
College-educated parents will likelier make sure that their own kids have enriching activities — athletics, performing arts, summer camps — whereas the non-college-educated families are obligated to spend time and resources studying to get standardized test scores up to an acceptable threshold in math and ELA.
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And, stop referring to private contractor schools as charter schools.
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This is a very interesting piece. I am interested to hear how we can avoid retention. There exists a problem of students coming into high school without the necessary skills. It is not a new problem. All the solutions to it I have heard of are expensive. How can we get kids to learn while they are young? When they get older, they begin to have goals that do not include learning.
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“When they get older, they begin to have goals that do not include learning.”
Well, sort of. They begin to have goals that do not include learning what adults want them to learn. Little kids have more of a built-in desire to please and get adult approval, so they’re more willing to jump through other people’s hoops. That still doesn’t really mean that their personal goals are to “learn” if we define “learn” solely as what adults in schools want them to learn, but they’re more willing to do what they’re told. Older kids are more concerned with peer approval than adult approval, so unless school goals align with their own goals, they’re not as likely to do what they’re told.
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Great question, Roy! Thank you, Diane. I do think smaller class sizes especially in K-3rd are important. There are different set-ups if schools would only get creative. Instead of focusing so much on data collection and assessment, the focus should be more on solutions for students!
Multi-age grouping might help a child make progress without the humiliation of retention.
Looping, where children get the same teacher 2 years in a row would give the teacher more time to understand where students are coming from. And it would give children more time to pick up skills.
I think Robert Balfanz and others have some good ideas about keeping students in school too, like those I listed. I just take issue with the term he came up with.
We should also not ignore the benefits of a resource class where students get additional 1-2 hours a day for help with deficient skills in reading or behavior.
For preteens and teens I think it’s all about engaging them in their interests and getting them involved in school and in after-school programs at the school.
Public schools have been terribly defunded for years. Think how much money is wasted creating two systems.
Also, it’s too bad so much time has to be spent defending our public schools instead of working together to find adequate solutions for the problems found in them. Thanks!
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Great question, Roy! Thank you, Diane. I do think smaller class sizes especially in K-3rd are important. There are different set-ups if schools would only get creative. Instead of focusing so much on data collection and assessment, the focus should be more on solutions for students!
Multi-age grouping might help a child make progress without the humiliation of retention.
Looping, where children get the same teacher 2 years in a row would give the teacher more time to understand where students are coming from. And it would give children more time to pick up skills.
I think Robert Balfanz and others have some good ideas about keeping students in school too, like those listed above. I just take issue with the term he came up with.
We should also not ignore the benefits of a resource class where students get additional 1-2 hours a day for help with deficient skills in reading or behavior.
For preteens and teens I think it’s all about engaging them in their interests and getting them involved in school and in after-school programs at the school.
Public schools have been terribly defunded for years. Think how much money is wasted creating two systems.
Also, it’s too bad so much time has to be spent defending our public schools instead of working together to find adequate solutions for the problems found in them. Thanks!
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“We should also not ignore the benefits of a resource class where students get additional 1-2 hours a day for help with deficient skills in reading or behavior.”
I don’t know about that. First of all, opportunity cost. That 1-2 hours would be at the expense of something probably much more interesting. Second, and related, why is the kid having reading and/or behavior problems in the first place? Is it because they’re not interested in what they’re being forced to do? Have you looked at school reading programs these days? I can’t say the stuff we read in elementary school was gripping or anything, but I’d take it any day over the obscure excerpts that a lot of kids are reading these days. Too often “reading intervention” is just more drilling down on these same pointless exercises that turn kids off to reading in the first place (and, often, lead to behavior problems).
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I am confundido. You state: “I think Robert Balfanz and others have some good ideas about keeping students in school too, like those listed above. I just take issue with the term he came up with.”
I see no reference to a Robert Balfanz anywhere in this post (maybe I’m missing it). And I am not sure to what “those listed above” refers and to what “the term he came up with” refers.
Please clarify!
TIA,
Duane
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If you read Nancy’s article, you will see that she goes into detail about Balfanz as the originator of the term “Dropout Factory” and has extensive ties to corporate reform movement.
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One of the few times I didn’t read the article referenced. I was confused about her comment and reference to “those listed above”.
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Most if not all corporate charter schools are autocratic, child abusive reject factories with much higher rates of abuse and rejection than the small ratio of children who are suspended and/or drop out of community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit traditional public schools.
And what is the biggest single reason that causes children to drop out of the traditional public schools – living in poverty?
In addition, the corporate education industry never mentions that half of the children that drop out of the traditional public high schools end up earning a high school degree or its equivalent before they turn 25. That is why the average annual on-time high school graduation rate is about 80 percent but by age 25 more than 90 percent of Americans have earned a high school degree adding credibility to the old saying “better late than never.”
And what is the biggest single reason that causes corporate charters schools to abuse children and reject them – the bias of poverty?
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I totally agree!
The REAL drop out factories are high performing charter chains where 25% or 50% or some number that must be kept hidden at all costs disappear.
Drop out rates of 30% or 50% over 5 years and a school calls itself a “success”? Only in charter-land.
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Privateers have been masters of using propaganda against public education. The term “failure factories” is an example of their handiwork. Public schools cannot afford to hire spin doctors to produce Madison Avenue slogans. I agree with all the items on Bailey’s list that need to be addressed in order to improve the delivery of services to under resourced schools. I would also add that schools should try to reach out to and work with parents. When schools reach out to parents, families feel more included in the process. Schools can also be a link between parents and needed social services.
“Reformers” rarely mention the impact of poverty or the fact that most urban schools are systematically underfunded as these topics do not feed their narrative. Bailey also does not mention the chronic disinvestiment in public schools in general since privatization has been the priority. States and cities continue to slash budgets to produce poor results making more schools ripe for takeover. The promotion of privatization goes all the way up to the top of our government despite the meager and often poor results privatization has yielded. It is a rigged system!
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In NJ, Christie has repeated the term “failure factories” over and over and over ad nauseam for almost 8 years. I so loathe and despise this fat blowhard.
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Yeah, this reductive trope has always annoyed me. Can we call the United States House of Representatives a “moron factory?”
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“Vice News” just had a story on scientists training to run for office because the “morons” are running the government. Their research is on Trump’s chopping block. Educators should do the same to fight the lies and false information.
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Thoroughly agree about teachers and scientists being the ones to politically run this country. It’d be a in a hell of a lot better shape wherein in we could adhere to a fidelity to truth attitude in the political process.
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Love it. The Moron Factory!
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Or how about, “TFA: the colonizer factory.”
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They should be called “starving schools” to bring to mind starving children’. It also helps put the blame on Gov for failing to maintain them.
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They mistake correlation for causation.
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This is one of the best explanations of reform I have seen. It is from a 2013 article with all the regular players.
“As we enter this new century, our nation’s continued prosperity rests on a strongly educated, highly skilled workforce,” Broad intoned in “Preparing Leaders for the New Economy? in School Administrator (March 2001). Fran Zimmerman, the school board member Broad wanted ousted from San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times, “He’s dabbling in social policy with all his money, and affecting change with it, but it’s not necessarily good change, and it’s not really school reform.” She emphasized, “It’s basically a business agenda for reshaping the public school system.”
The Resistance: Casting a Broad Net of Influence
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=333
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