Howard Ryan, writing in Monthly Review, analyzes the sources of support for corporate reform and privatization.
Ryan writes:
Over the past three decades, public schools have been the target of a systematic assault and takeover by corporations and private foundations. The endeavor is called “school reform” by its advocates, while critics call it corporate school reform. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg has given it the vivid acronym GERM—the global education reform movement. Its basic features are familiar: high-stakes testing; standardized curricula; privatization; and deskilled, high-turnover faculty. In the United States, public schools have become increasingly segregated, destabilized, and defunded, with the hardest hit in low-income communities of color.
Nevertheless, while the political conflicts and social ramifications of the school reform phenomenon are well known, basic questions about the movement remain underexamined. Who really leads it? What are their aims and motives? After briefly taking up the statements of the reformers themselves, I will turn to the views of their progressive opponents, and offer a critique of three influential interpretations of the school reform movement. Finally, I will present my own theory about this movement, its drivers, and its underlying aims…
A large body of research, however, challenges the merits of high-stakes testing and other elements of the corporate school reform package. It is also at least questionable whether the reformers really believe their own statements.
The reformers’ interest in school improvement appears, in a number of ways, to be less than genuine, to mask a different agenda. They prescribe models for mass education that they do not consider suitable for their own children. They sponsor think tanks to produce “junk research” praising their models, while ignoring studies that contradict their models. They insist that full resourcing of schools is unimportant or unrealistic, and that “great teachers” will succeed regardless of school conditions, class size, or professional training.”
You will find it interesting to see how he weaves together the various strands of the corporate reform movement.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ryan gives us a great overview of all the various forces behind so called “reform.” He outlines the history and all the agenda driven players in the various arms of the reform hydra, and it is a disturbing review. I don’t know that I would portray Gates, the Waltons and Broad as philanthropists, as Ryan does, since they use their wealth like an ax to force adoption of their visions. While Ryan alludes to a bigger mission, it is clear that in addition to making money or selling an ideology, reform wants to dominate and destroy democratic public schools and replace them with autocratic corporate education for the masses. The ultimate prize is mind control of the proletariat.
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Diane This is an excellent article, excellently written. There are several “keepers quotes,” especially the ones about how the privatizers’ view towards curricula is not the view they want for their own children. . . . very telling.
Also, the writer says in the conclusion: “. . . this reading may encourage us to think more strategically about the classroom as a site for challenging corporate hegemony. The demands for an education that is democratic, critical, multicultural, and multilingual belong at the center of a broad public education movement.”
Yes/yes/yes; however, talking about such “demands,” the writer still (wrongly) sets up opposites that MAY be rooted in his socialist ideology? So that he talks about “challenging corporate hegemony” rather than talking about challenging ANY kind of hegemony that would quash students’ questions, including a “democratic, critical”, etc. government that, as we all know, can as easily go off the rails.
Also, the author is openly (and rightly) looking for a variety of motivations in the slow-saturation effect of the planned privatization movement. However, he only hints at what I think deserves much more heat: the DeVos kind of religious zealotry that, either stupidly or intentionally or both, is a direct threat to–not religious expression, but rather to religious freedom. (The Texas pastor’s group has this right–so refreshing to read their stuff.)
Such writers should never overlook the power of the religious right (and center-right in this country, at least) and their utter disgust with “secular values” (code for “individual freedoms” ensconced in the Constitution) nailed down in the huge Catholic sector by the abortion issue. DeVos and many in the religious right seem to have no understanding of what secular “walls” do for world peace and the very ground of their own religious freedom they want to so easily dispose of. With Trump, they held their noses on moral issues and voted for him anyway.
As an aside, now we are slowly seeing open violence enter the field of political “discourse” and be accepted by turn-the-other-way polity, or is it “cheek”?
Also, the idea that ALL testing is bad is pervasive in the article.
In brief, I like the history he portrays of the movement and its insidious transformation from (a) wanting economic parity and “well being” for all to (b) corporate power initiatives based on twisted ideas of class. I think we could rightly refer to that movement as a REAL CONSPIRACY against the whole idea of a constitutional democracy and the kind of education that can keep The Great Experiment from exploding.
However, and as good as it is, the article lacks evidence for the use of dialectical gardening tools, and leaves polemical thinking in place–in this case, for example, all or no testing and, as I read it, socialism against capitalism.
A dialectical, rather than a polemical treatment would carry much more power, especially for readers who are authentic teachers and who do not want to be the silent carriers of someone’s or some group’s set-in-stone political agenda.
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You are way ahead of me in giving this a critical reading and making disticnctions well-suited for a graduate seminar.
I plan to do some close reading, but the gist of the article seems to me spot on in explaining a lot.
I agree that religious zealotry is a real threat.
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Laura H. Chapman: I’ve seen writers before, who live in “secular” writing arenas, totally overlook the religious forces among us–good and bad and in-between–but always a massive undertow in any culture. The particular DeVos brand, where money and power come together with ignorant zealotry is particular dangerous; but again, often their good and bad power is overlooked in the analyses.
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Hi Catherine,
Thanks for the last paragraph, really. Strong evidence has strength;
research presented as a story has the power to drive public opinion.
I have long quit being a man of many words… Yet, I must point out – if this story started in the early 70’s, that’s more than forty years.
Do you remember the chapter one of ‘To kill a Mocking Bird’?
“When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back at them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.
I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?”
I am most thankful to Ryan for publishing his findings.
I’ll just quote Obama here, “We can afford neither complacency nor despair.”
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P.S. – The whole quote, “….action requires that we shed our cynicism. For when it comes to the pursuit of justice, we can afford neither complacency nor despair.”
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apurva prabhawalkar Yes, I remember. How this comes about is one question. But on the other end, thinking about movements of capitalism, it seems to have produced a group of people who mistake their sheer luck in (a) being born into wealth or (b) at the right place and time in history, for their blood right to power; and then go on to mistake that power for endowed intelligence and excellence. Then in their ignorance of their own ignorance, they forget and so abandon their real roots, their political family and its past, for an illusory vision which, if not stopped, might actually come true, for awhile, at least.
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We know what the Education Capitalists are trying to sell us because it’s the same thing Capitalist have already sold us in every other sector of society. They want to make education a consumer commodity, where the quality of education you get depends on the quantity of wealth you have — and no provision of Education Stamps is going to have any impact on that.
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The funniest assumption was that some business people believe that higher test scores will improve the GDP. Really? Business don’t have to prove anything. If they say it, it must be true.
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Sales Pitches don’t have to be true, they only have to be repeated, over and over and over again. When education is commercialized, 90% of the education budget will be spent on commercials.
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Correction: Businesses
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The GDP link is the biggest fraud of all. The financial sector drags down GDP by an estimated 2%. The publicly-educated workforce has been exploited and forced to haul the impediment of Wall Street over the past 20 years to achieve the productivity gains the country has made.
Concentrated wealth stymies growth as well.
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Read it all :
https://monthlyreview.org/2017/04/01/who-is-behind-the-assault-on-public-schools/
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Corporate Reform And Privatization (you do the acronym)
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The bigger question in 2017 seems to be, who in government and business isn’t? We need to find them and make them more vocal allies.
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“I believe that this analysis improves on previous interpretations by accounting for the leading forces of reform who are not out merely to “get rich” off schools, but have other objectives. Second, this reading may encourage us to think more strategically about the classroom as a site for challenging corporate hegemony.”
While I agree with everything the author states there is no epiphany here .
When Billionaires Become Educational Experts
“Venture philanthropists” push for the privatization of public education.
By Kevin K. Kumashiro
Covered the same topics 5 years ago
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=431 Susan Ohanian covered it as well
Robert Monks covers it in his book
“Corpocracy: How CEOs and the Business Roundtable Hijacked the World’s Greatest Wealth Machine- And How to Get It Back”
Essentially about how the Round Table has reshaped corporate governance to create the inequality we have today. But Monks highlights the attacks on education and higher education .
Finally the documentary all should watch “Heist who stole the American Dream” featuring starring roles for Sanders and Warren, long before they were household names . pegs attacks on education and a whole lot more to the destructive force of the RoundTable .
The Business Roundtable was organized with help from the Nixon administration, its primary goal was the destruction of the Construction Trade Unions . It did very well decimating union construction in all but a few markets in less than a decade in the 70s taking 89% market share down to the low teens today.
Its first major legislative victory a defeat of a virtual repeal of Taft Hartley, by a one vote filibuster victory in the Carter Administration.
I have said many times here, there are many reasons the big boys including Gates are in the ed reform business, profit is just an added perk. This is about controlling the masses creating as the author states, a subservient working class. Segregation or the appeal to segregationists a useful tool in the box.
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Thanks for the history.
Oligarchs are creating a feudal society/colonialism within U.S. borders which identifies them as traitors to American democracy.
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All of the public university graduates employed by New America (Gates funded) should read Ryan’s article.
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Finally had a chance to read the article this morning. It’s well written…..the organization is crystal clear. I like that. Interesting comments above, too.
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For thirty years, corporations and the wealthy have supported the supply-side tax policies that piled up budget deficits under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. They are now eager to see the Trump tax cuts enacted, which would add at least another $6 trillion to the national debt.
Conservative laissez-faire regulatory policies aided and abetted fraud and corruption on Wall Street, subsidized the off-shoring of millions of jobs, and led to the mortgage and finance meltdowns that broke the economy. Yet, corporations are sitting on more than $2.5 trillion in profits and they are trying to finagle another tax-free holiday for profits that they’ve socked away overseas (the last time this happened, they refused to invest that tax-free money in job creation).
These same corporate entities want a change in the entire tax system that would protect (not tax) their off-shore earnings. As the Washington Post reported in December of 2012, “tax experts warn, however, that such a change could have broad implications for the economy…blow a hole in tax revenue, give multinationals more leeway to exploit tax havens and drive jobs overseas.” Edward D. Kleinbard, a tax expert at the University of Southern California, said that “The tax system they envision would gut the entire U.S. corporate tax code.”
Make no mistake. Corporations (and their allies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and the Financial Services Roundtable) and the wealthy have voted and lobbied for the oligarchic policies that have enriched themselves while piling the debt –– and the blame –– on ordinary citizens…and now they want them to pay for it all through cuts to Social Security, and Medicare and Medicaid and public education.
None of this should ever have happened…but that’s what happens in democratic societies when people fail to pay attention, when public education is subverted by high-stakes tests, narrowed curricula and assessment “accountability,” when the press fails to do its job well, and when courts take the side of big business over the rights of the people. And when democratic citizenship is not a focus of public schooling.
The bottom line is that conservatives and their corporate and wealthy masters have caused the economic problems the United States faces. They may periodically wrap themselves in the flag, but their supply-side policies have undermined the general welfare of the people in favor of enriching the rich.
The Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have pushed hard for tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and laissez-faire regulatory policies ––both of which caused a huge pile-up of deficits and debt, and led to a shattered economy. The supply-side policies these organizations promoted led to increases in poverty, millions of lost jobs and houses, a corporate culture that fosters off-shore tax evasion and funds oligarchic ideology, and gross income inequality. And they point the finger of blame at public education. For example, the Chamber says that Common Core standards “are essential to helping the United States remain competitive” in the global economy.”
But that’s simply not true, The U.S. already is internationally competitive.
The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on competitiveness. It uses “a highly comprehensive index” of the “many factors” that enable “national economies to achieve sustained economic growth and long-term prosperity.”
The U.S. is usually in the top five (if not 1 or 2). When it drops, the WEF doesn’t cite education, but stupid economic decisions and policies. For example, when the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
More recently major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community” and business leaders who are “critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process with a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits….especially deficits and debt accrued over the last decade that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.” The WEF did NOT cite public schools as being problematic to innovation and competitiveness.
Four years ago the WEF dropped the U.S. to 7th place (The WEF now ranks the U.S. at #3) citing problems like “increasing inequality and youth unemployment” — and, environmentally — “the United States is among the countries that have ratified the fewest environmental treaties.“ The WEF noted that in the U.S.,”the business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions” and “trust in politicians is not strong.” Political dysfunction has led to “a lack of macroeconomic stability” that “continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness.”
But where does the finger of blame get pointed? At public schools. Seriously, you’d almost have to be a moron to buy into this stuff. But this kind of ‘thinking’ is at the center of the Republican party’s economic policies. And Republicans control Congress and the Oval office (with a big assist from Russian intelligence agencies).
How and why has the American citizenry allowed this to happen? And why aren’t we advocating that democratic citizenship be the core mission of public education?
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“Who is behind the assault on public education?”
Greg Gianforte??
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I didn’t read the article, but I already know the answer: it’s the major political party (although to confuse the public, it goes by two names) and the elites who it represents.
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Based on the Forbes’ article about a proposed college accreditation plan, written by the Center for American Progress (Nov. 2016), CAP’s part of the ed. privatization plot, walking in lock step with Sen. Rubio. It’s no surprise the plan was written by a current CAP staffer, who was formerly a New America employee.
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