Nicholas Kristof wrote an article defending Bridge International Academies’ for-profit schools in Africa. I disagreed with him here. He responded on Twitter by saying, if you want to judge, go visit a government school. His article asserted that when government doesn’t do its job, private enterprise should step in.
A reader calling him/herself “NYC Public School Parent” distilled Kristof’s arguments and shows why his solution is no solution. Please feel free to send this commentary to Kristof on Twitter:
“Shorter Nicholas Kristof:
“The government has failed to carry out its mission to teach all students. So I am going to promote a private corporation offering to teach the richest students who can afford the fees and ignore how many students drop out and then marvel at the “studies” that show amazing success.
“Shorter Nicholas Kristof:
“I support Trumpcare replacing Obamacare which has failed to make every American healthy. I am truly astonished and in awe of those private insurers who are willing — for a fee– to insure any American who is healthy and I won’t notice that when they are no longer healthy they get sick. Because I get lots of freebies and invited to rich people’s parties for pretending that allowing a private corporation to pick off the cheapest to teach or cheapest to insure people is a marvelous success!
“Shorter Nicholas Kristof:
“When there is government corruption, it is better to allow the private corporations to get rich. That’s why I believe that Trump’s corruption of the federal government should demand a return to private corporations being allowed to run rampant with no regulations.
“According to Kristof’s ridiculous premise, the answer to Trump’s corruption is to allow private enterprise to run rampant. Because actually supporting the democratic regulations that would prevent such corruption is not something the rich people he likes to hang out with believe and he is happy to agree when it comes to education. He cannot even see how much his piece is what Trump himself believes. When the government is corrupt, the best “fix” is allow private corporations to do whatever they want, says Nicholas Kristof and the entire Republican party.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Rich, white people swoop in and take for themselves resources that would otherwise have gone to the ‘brown people’s’ country or city to help the poor. They pad their own bank accounts with poor people’s money. The excuse racists like Gates and Kristof give is “but look at how brown they are. They can’t take care of themselves.” It is the height of paternalistic racism and an extension of 400 years of theft and subjugation.
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Amen, LeftCoastTeacher! I couldn’t agree with you more! I’ve seen this hapoen over and over again and this makes me sick.
Just because of their $$$$$$$, the rich think they know best and they don’t. The rich live in a HUGE BUBBLE and have NO CLUE. They can PURCHASE their degrees.
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Wow, Kristof seems to have a lot of faith in oligarchs, plutocrats and predatory capitalists. They can do no wrong and are free of any taint of corruption?! Really? Ever heard of ENRON, Arthur Andersen, Adelphia, Worldcom, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Indymac Bank, etc.
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Thanks NYC Public School Parent. I am reminded of the inaugural address of Ronald Reagan, 1981, proclaiming that… “government is not the solution to our problem: government is the problem.” Predatory capitalists have not reason to consider government as anything other than an obstacle to making profits, including profit-seeling from the poorest of the poor.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43130
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YEP!
Was totally amazed (in a bad way) that Raygun won, not just once but twice. Didn’t think it could get worse. Boy was I wrong.
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Kristoff also used the other peoples kids argument. It wouldn’t be good here because it’s not the best system but for their kids….. it’s ok
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I just found an interesting video that bears on the whole “it’s good enough for schools serving other people’s kids, but DON’T EVEN THINK of subjecting my own kids to that.”
TOPIC: uncertified teachers teaching at privately managed charter schools servicing low-income Latino and African-American communities
Ever wonder what goes on in a closed-to-the-public meeting of the SUNY Board of Trustees — the group that authorizes NYC charter schools such as Eva Moskowitz Success Academy Charter Schools?
Well, hey, now’s your chance!
Somebody secretly videotaped a meeting of the SUNY Board of Trustees meeting — a meeting where the controversial measure to allow uncertified teachers to work in SUNY-authorized charters was discussed.
It’s now on YouTube.
Included in this meeting was a community leader not happy with the new regulations — one Maria Bautista.
This is truly explosive stuff, so much so that someone made a TRANSCRIPT of part of it.
SUNY Board Chairman Joseph Belluck claims that he is livid at the tweets and overall “smear campaign” that has been portraying him as “a racist” because he backs using uncertified teacher in SUNY-authorized charters, and is instrumental in legislation that is making that possible.
In response to this, African-American/Puerto-Rican-American activist Maria Bautista of the Alliance for Quality Education is not buying Belluck’s attempt to fabricate victimhood for himself. She then proceeds to unload on Belluck, saying that Belluck himself might not be, but his new policy is most certainly “racist” in its effect, if not intent.
Would you want YOUR OWN kids taught by these uncertified
teachers?
Bautista asks him, and this sets Belluck off, but unfortunately, the video cuts off before we can hear him out.
Enjoy!
TRANSCRIPT
( 0:13 – )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c-DGC1L0jc
( 0:13 – )
MARIA BAUTISTA: “I just want to clarify something, that this ISN’T a smear campaign against you. Right?
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Okay.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “That this has EVERYTHING to do with black and brown children -”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Right.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “- and THEIR access to high quality education, and second of all, if the teachers’ union wanted to be here and talk themselves, they WOULD be.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Okay.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “So I’m here to talk about the Alliance for Quality Education.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Well, I’ll just … I’ll just say to you that,
when I look at my phone, and someone tweets the following:
” ‘@JoeBelluck is willing to allow this racist policy to persist.’
” … I take umbrage at it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “That’s RIGHT! ‘Cause you ARE!”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I take umbrage at it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” ‘YOU”RE the Chair, and you’re allowing it to proceed – ”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Well -”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” – so that’s NOT a smear campaign. It’s actually WHAT’S HAPPENING, and whether or not you feel defensive about that – ”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I’m NOT defensive about it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” – but this is your responsibility.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I’m NOT defensive about it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “Exactly. You ARE defensive about it. You’re saying that this is a smear campaign, and it’s NOT. We’re calling … we’re calling the cards for what they are.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “What I’m suggesting to you is that – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “This is the card that YOU are ALLOWING to move forward — these regulations for people to give comments on, when we know that they (classes taught by uncertified teachers) are going disproportionately impact black and brown children.
“You would NEVER have uncertified teachers teach YOUR children, so WHY is it okay for black and brown children? Why is THAT okay?”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Okay – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “It is NOT okay!”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “What I’m suggesting to you – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “That is the point. It’s NOT a smear campaign.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: ” “What I’m suggesting to you is that the things that are going to move this committee to act are going to be the substance of the regulations, and whether or not they are best for educating the kids who are in our schools.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “Would you want this for YOUR children? No.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: (angry) “I’m not going to speak to you about MY children -”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “I would love that -”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: ” – because frankly – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” – because what you would want for YOUR children is what you should want for EVERY child in this city.”
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Jack,
Thank you for posting this.
I hope a journalist starts investigating the SUNY Charter Institute and Joseph Belluck. It isn’t just this. The October 2014 meeting was also videotaped where they gave a charter chain a huge number of new schools when there were documented empty seats in their current schools. Instead of investigating or doing oversight as to whether it was true, SUNY took the charter CEO at her word that it was all a “glitch”. They also tried to avoid bad press about more favoritism toward that billionaire-funded charter chain by improperly approving a school in a different district than originally proposed. They actually published this approval and then had to change it back to the original location (in an embarrassingly rich neighborhood where the chain already had 2 underused schools that had far fewer low-income students than they were supposed to be serving.)
I only wish that Maria Bautista had asked Joseph Belluck why SUNY keeps giving suspiciously early renewals to billionaire-funded charter schools with very high suspension rates of young elementary school students? The best piece of evidence of Belluck’s racism is his rewarding the charter school CEO who claims that lots and lots of 5 year olds in her schools are so violent she needs to suspend them over and over again. I’d like to know why Belluck wants more of those schools that claim to be so expert at identifying violent non-white 5 year olds and I wish someone would publicly force him to answer why he is rewarding those schools instead of investigating their racist claims that they had no choice but to suspend such abhorrently violent non-white children because there was no other way to address such violence when so many non-white kindergarten students in Belluck’s favorite charter school regularly commit. The fact that Belluck believes that non-certified teachers will be better at identifying the many violent non-white little children who the charters he keeps rewarding want to suspend demonstrates how racist Belluck really is.
He sounds like Donald Trump in his denials of reality and attempts to change the subject and attack critics. Which just goes to show you that SUNY is not actually interested in the facts — just in promoting the schools that billionaires want them to promote. SUNY should have to tell the public exactly what kind of oversight they are doing beyond “as long as most of your students pass state exams, we don’t care what you do to them or how many disappear.” They keep giving the charters that suspend outrageous numbers of 5 year olds early renewals!! Despite lawsuits. They have no interest in the kids who disappear and saying “as long as there is a market” is definitely NOT oversight.
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Thank you NYC Public School Parent for the last sentence:
“…When the government is corrupted, the best “fix” is to allow private corporations to do whatever they want, says Nicholas Kristof and the entire Republican party.”
Educators and parents are tax payers, and are not crying baby. Please unite to make Public Officials (servants) to be entrusted with dignity, transparency and decency of worthy as being ELECTED Public Officials. Back2basic
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It’s really amazing how little they care about kids in public schools:
” Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC) announces its support of a first-of-its-kind independent evaluation comparing the test performance of North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship recipients with their peers in public schools. A research team from North Carolina State University (NC State) is conducting the evaluation, and statewide testing is already underway for students participating.
Drawn from representative locations across North Carolina, a sample of a few hundred students who are current Opportunity Scholarship recipients will participate in voluntary testing sessions at private schools. NC State has also been collaborating with school districts to generate a matched comparison group of public school students. Both Opportunity Scholarship students and public school students are taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), a nationally-normed, standardized achievement test. Student tests will be scored by a third-party testing company; results will be returned to NC State researchers, who will compare the two groups’ test performance in reading, written expression, and mathematics.”
They’re using the public school kids to generate a comparison to the private school kids.
The public school kids get absolutely no benefit from this- they’re the “control” group – they won’t benefit from the vouchers at all- in fact, their schools will probably get hurt.
The public school children should be paid for donating their time and energy to the voucher lobby. Their one and only role is as data generators – not one benefit to them – this has nothing to do with them. They’re simply being used in this experiment.
If they don’t have any interest in kids in public schools the least they could do is not use them to promote their agenda.
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Allison added, “It is vitally important to our organization that we all, as a coalition of K-12 stakeholders, work together for accountability in our state’s schools. I want to thank agencies that helped make this possible, including the NC State Education Assistance Authority, the NC Department of Public Instruction, and the NC Division of Non-Public Education for providing excellent professional service with regards to this project. Finally, we have worked closely with NC State over the last several months to ensure this testing analysis could take place. It is our hope that by engaging in this process, we will lay a firm foundation for real and ongoing accountability in this Program.”
Nothing – no benefit at all- for the public school kids who graciously agreed to donate their time, energy and test scores so public employees in North Carolina can continue to promote the private schools these children don’t attend.
It’s one thing to gut their schools. That’s bad enough. It’s another to insist they help ed reformers do it.
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“His article asserted that when government doesn’t do its job, private enterprise should step in.” That line about the government not doing its job, I’ve heard it before. We all have. It’s the same nonsense-based failing schools narrative they’ve foisted on the good old US of A since the Reagan administration. Lemme guess how this is gonna go: Kenya is a “nation at risk!” It’s dreams of preeminence in “technological” “innovation” cannot be fulfilled because its “government schools” are a “dead end”. They are “dropout factories”. The proof is in scattered anecdotes about teachers “sleeping on the job” and “ejaculating on cookies”. We “data driven” billionaires must put the children “first” — with iPads. It’s the human “rights issue of the 21st century” and beyond!
I have a feeling, Diane, you don’t have to go all the way to Nairobi to know the failing public schools narrative Kristof spews on Twitter is just garden variety, cooked up sales gimmickry.
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Have state lawmakers in North Carolina accomplished one thing that actually benefits children in public schools this year? A benefit. Some value added to the schools they ACTUALLY attend.
The focus on vouchers now extends to deputizing public school children to provide data for voucher studies. That’s their only value to these folks- AS COMPARED to the schools ed reform prefers.
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Just to the public is aware, this is what the US Department of Education is endorsing at ALEC tomorrow:
“Instead of throwing more money at the problem, it’s time to let parents take back control over their children’s educations by allowing them to apply competitive pressure to schools and educational providers. Innovative, parent-empowering choices such as charter schools, voucher programs, tax credit scholarships, homeschool, and education savings accounts allow each child the opportunity to reach his or her potential. In higher education, greater transparency is needed to ensure that students and parents know what they are paying for, and with what prospects they are likely to graduate.”
90% of US kids attend public schools but this conference they’re attending?
Public schools aren’t even mentioned other than as “failing”. That’s what your public servants in DC are up to tomorrow. Promoting charter and private schools and utterly excluding the 90% in public schools.
Who exactly do these people work for now that they’ve excluded 90% of US kids?
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Your federal tax dollars at work, folks:
“Instead of endless top-down mandates, these revolutionary inroads into the education system are coming from the states. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books allowing charter schools to operate, while half the states have some form of private school choice program. The states should continue to expand parent choice and push educational institutions to compete with each other to provide the best product, just like providers of any other service.”
Not one substantive achievement this year on behalf of the 90% who attend public schools, but they find time to attend anti-public school events.
If you are a public school parent they are actively working against your child’s school, and they’re doing it while on your payroll.
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I think the saddest thing about that ALEC statement against public schools is it could have come from Arne Duncan or any of a number of Democratic ed reformers.
There is absolutely no difference. Read that and try to find an area where ALEC diverges from the ed reform “movement”- the two groups are now one.
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So SAD, too. The DEMs have lost their way. Thus, we now have that DUMP. The DNC dissed our honorable public school teachers.
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I think NYC parent is basing his opinions on a distorted view of public education in the developing world. In general, public schools in developing do a poor job of educating most students and governments are not particularly concerned. The primary school dropout rate in Uganda is 68%. Better than the 72% primary school dropout rate in Chad, but still a very high percentage of students.
Wealthy families in the developing world already send their children to high quality private schools. Poor families in the developing world often send their children to private schools because 1) the government has not bothered to build any public schools in the area (there is at least one city of a quarter million in Nigeria without a single public school), and/or 2) private schools, that typically charge only a little more than public schools, are a better bargain than public schools because private school teachers are more likely to show up and teach. That is why there are 18,000 private schools in Lagos Nigeria.
The level of government corruption in the developing world is far beyond anything existing in the United States. From the police and petty officials who require bribes for everything to ghost teachers and schools to government officials who steal millions at a time.
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BIA is not profitable. At some point, the investors will abandon it.
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The poorest families can’t afford private schools, period.
If you want to profit from corruption, you open BIA and tell yourself you are doing a good deed.
If you actually want to do a good deed, you work to make things better for ALL students instead of abandoning the poorest and the ones who aren’t “profitable” to teach.
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NYC public school parent,
There are 18,000 private schools in Lagos, Nigeria and 1,600 government run “public” schools. Marthare, a slum outside of Nairobi, has 4 government run “public schools” to serve the half million inhabitants, but thankfully it also has 120 private schools. The average cost of a private school in Lagos is $35 a term, the lowest cost private school less than half that. These schools are designed to serve the children of people who live on less than $2.00 a day and are not much more expensive for parents than sending students to government run “public” schools.
The best estimate is that there are about a million private schools in developing countries. These exist because the government schools are not intended to educate everyone. Sierra Leone recently found out that 6,000 teachers (one fifth of the total number of teachers in the country) they had on salary did not exist. Pakistan discovered that 8,000 state schools that the government had been supporting do not exist. Teachers in government run “public” schools are absent from class between 15% and 25% of the time.
Facts on the ground matter. Making government run “public” schools better for all students will take many generations. I am surprised that you are willing to sacrifice the education of other peoples children to this goal.
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I certainly understand the motivation to profit from a corrupt government. Just don’t kid yourself that you are doing it for the kids. You are doing it because you see a way to profit from a corrupt government that has no interest in educating the very poorest students. Neither do you. Are we supposed to be impressed that you will teach profitable students?
It would be possible to use some of the billions to establish better schools for ALL children instead of just the ones whose families can pay. Of course if you find many of the poorest children distasteful or simply not “cost-effective” that would be something you would avoid.
It all depends on whether you view education of young children as a means to profit or a social good.
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Thank you very much for posting my comment. I apologize for being so long-winded when I wrote it – there was something about Kristof’s condescension and obliviousness in his writing that was appalling.
Kristof marvels that a private entity can come in and open a for-profit private school where only the students from the most motivated families willing to shell out the money may attend. And of course, with the caveat that if your kid is no longer “profitable” to teach, out he goes. As if we don’t have private schools all over THIS country willing to teach the kids whose parents can afford the tuition and will see that their kid does their part to learn. And of course, counsel out the ones that don’t. Kristof knows that US private schools charge $40,000/year tuition and still counsel out many students who can pay simply because they aren’t worth teaching at $40,000/year!! So his marveling that a school charging tuition that can rid themselves of students at will has “better” results is embarrassing for him. Then he actually says that it’s all okay because Bridge International isn’t making a profit yet!
Kristof just got played for a fool — he took a trip to the chain discount store and said “look how much better the prices are – how amazing!” as if is was irrelevant that those low prices weren’t loss-leaders subsidized by deep pockets that were unsustainable.
Perhaps the most depressing thing about Kristof is that he basically says it is better to work with corrupt governments to help a small number of the cheapest to educate students get an education (and some billionaires make a profit in the future) even if it means that the dream of all students getting a better education dies on the vine. No doubt Kristof agrees with the charter operators who say those other kids are worthless anyway so why bother. It is too much money and too much bother to teach kids who aren’t a credit to your school and there’s nothing wrong with having them leave if their tuition doesn’t make them profitable or they can’t afford the tuition anymore. Out the door. Even when they are 5.
The biggest lie that Kristof and the billionaires he admires so much in the education reform industry promote is that every child costs the same to educate. They do not. Children come to school with all kinds of different abilities, needs, backgrounds, and advantages. Some can be taught with little expense and some will cost 10 times as much. Or 20 times as much. Or, in the case of severely disabled children, even 100x as much. It is the same with health care and for the senior citizens who get Medicare. Some will drop dead suddenly and some will spend months in the hospital. Some will need nothing but some prescription drugs and live until 95 and others will need round the clock care, frequent hospitalizations and live until 100. This is common sense and if you ask any parent they can tell you that children, too, are different. Some can be taught in classes of 30 with an inexperienced teacher and his one rote way of teaching the material, and others can’t. The point of Medicare is that Americans were all in this together and shared the cost. The point of public school is that Americans were all in this together and shared the cost. That’s something Kristof has forgotten in his rush to shower BIA with acclaim.
Kristof’s praise is no different than him praising a private health insurance company who goes into Liberia to offer “low-cost” health insurance to those who can pay and drops any who get sick. No doubt Kristof would marvel at how much healthier the people using that private health insurance were than those using underfunded government hospitals and medical resources.
Too many so-called “liberals” like Kristof have completely abandoned a large swath of children to “the market”. And it is not surprising that the children he has abandoned are the ones who are usually not white and not affluent. He marvels at for-profit or non-profit private entities that teach only the strivers among them and looks the other way when education leaders say “but the others were violent 5 year olds and unworthy” as they drum them out for the “crime” of being too expensive to teach.
I suspect that Bridge International chose the “tuition” route because it means that the only students that enroll in their school are from families who are so motivated for them to learn that they will spend a high portion of their annual income on tuition. And even then they have no obligation to teach those children if they find that they are too much bother. That is not public education.
Why not establish non-profit schools in Liberia that teach ALL children and have an obligation to them until they are age 16? I guess that Bridge International knew that was not a profitable undertaking. Kristof tells us what a great job they do as long as they can cherry pick children. So what? So does every other private school throughout the world.
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This is not charity. It is a for-profit business operating at a loss, giving the. Billionaires tax deductions.
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