The Liberian Teachers Association and other African teachers groups published a protest against the commercializations of the nation’s schools.
“In January 2016, in a controversial move, the Government of Liberia announced its intention to outsource its primary and pre-primary education system to a US-based for-profit corporate actor, Bridge International Academies (BIA). Following considerable opposition to this unprecedented move the Government conceived a pilot program, Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), where eight actors would operate 93 schools in the first year.
“Despite claiming that PSL would be subject to a rigorous evaluation through a Randomized Control Trial (RCT), six months into the trial, the Ministry of Education (MoE) decided to increase the number of schools to 202 in the project’s second year. Serious unanswered concerns, including children being denied access to their local schools, have not been enough for the government to pause and reflect. This rush to expand the pilot before independent research is available has been rightly criticized by the international academic and research community and the appointed RCT team who questioned the government’s capacity to hold providers accountable.
“In addition to lack of independent evidence supporting the government’s actions, the PSL is also plagued with a lack of transparency. To date not one of the eight current Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) between the service providers and the MoE have been made public. Despite the secrecy surrounding the PSL, information that has entered the public domain thus far gives rise to serious concerns about the sustainability of the program.
“This lack of independent evidences, transparency and resultant lack of accountability does not make for good policy nor good governance. Furthermore, the increased power put into the hands of undemocratic, often foreign private institutions that make decisions with little community input and accountability undermines our voice and sovereignty over our education system and our nation as a whole.
“We fear, once having outsourced our schools through this PSL arrangement we will never be able to get them back. We will be at the mercy of large corporate operators who will seek to maximize profit at the expense of Liberia’s children and their future.
“The many unanswered questions give rise to genuine concern about the future direction in the provision of quality education for all.
“Considering:
“• Liberia’s 2011 Education Law which guarantees free and compulsory education for all.
“• The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Kishore Singh’s words which describe the intended outsourcing of Liberia schools as “violating Liberia’s legal and moral obligations,” and that “such arrangements are a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education.”
“• The absence of clear, independent, and public research supporting the PSL program.
“• Serious ongoing issues including the lack of community input, transparency, and accountability of the program.
“We call on the government to immediately abandon the PSL program.
The children of Liberia deserve evidence based, sustainable improvements in public education, including:
“• Free, quality, early childhood education
“• Free, compulsory, quality primary and secondary education
“• A focus on gender equality and girls’ education
“• Quality teaching and learning environments and resources
“• Quality alternative education for over-age children.
“• Policies focusing on the most marginalized children.
“• Effective, negotiated school and system monitoring and supervision.
“We need:
“• Quality teacher training and on-going professional development; and
“• Our teachers to be properly supported and remunerated, on time, and respected.
“Acknowledging the challenges that continue to impact on the provision of education, we reiterate our preparedness now, as we have in the past, to work constructively with the government and any other interested parties to develop a sustainable Liberian plan leading to the ongoing improvement in the provision of quality education for all Liberian children.
“SIGNED:
National Teachers’ Association of Liberia (NTAL)
Civil Society and Trade Union Institutions of Liberia (CTIL)
National Health Workers Association of Liberia (NAHWAL)
Roberts International Airport Workers Union (RIAWU)
Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE)
Diversified Educators Empowerment Project (DEEP)
National Christian Council of Liberia (NCCL)
Union of Islamic Citizens of Liberia (UICL) Monrovia Consolidated School System Teachers’ Association (MCSSTA) Liberia Education for All Technical Committee (LETCOM)
Concern Universities Students of the Ministry of Education Local Scholarship Program (CUSMOP)
United Methodist Church Human Rights Monitor (UMCHRM)
National Association of Liberian School Principals (NALSP)
“With the support of:
Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT)
Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT)
South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) Uganda National Teachers Union (UNATU) Education International (EI)”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is good news. Thank you, Diane.
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“Despite claiming that PSL would be subject to a rigorous evaluation through a Randomized Control Trial (RCT), six months into the trial, the Ministry of Education (MoE) decided to increase the number of schools to 202 in the project’s second year
I wonder how much the leaders in the Ministry of Education were paid by those American billionaire oligarchs to do this.
Transparency International has this to say about Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Liberia.
“corruption remains endemic and permeates most sectors of the society. Low public sector salaries, lack of training and capacity, inefficient and cumbersome regulations create both incentives and opportunities for corruption across the public sector.”
https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/answer/overview_of_corruption_and_anti_corruption_in_liberia
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Racist entrepreneurs have no right to degrade public school teachers as failures in this or any other country. I stand with my public school colleagues in Liberia, in Kenya, in Mexico, in the United States, and everywhere else. Economic inequality is not caused by teachers. Duh!
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And speaking of edu-deform, for-profit companies struggling with profit:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-netflix-debt-spending-20170729-story.html
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Agreed.
These people have some gall.
It’s not enough to dictate education and replace teachers in the US.
They have to do it in other countries as well
This is precisely why development projects so often fail.
They don’t involve the affected people in the decision-making process.
It must be nice to nthink you know better than everyone else in the world simply because you made a bug riddled operating system or stupid social network that allows people to relive their high school glory days.
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“that allows people to relive their high school glory days.”
Hey, now some of us relive our childhood everyday! (Hell it’s no different from the current reality in which we live :-).
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And the government will never make public education a priority so long as they have greedy Americans willing to open charter schools.
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The government will never make it a priority period.
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By outsourcing education to a for-profit company, the government can safely withdraw and let the company take responsibility.
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What is you estimate for the time line? One generation? two? three?
How many generations of brown children should be sacrificed?
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Why not sacrifice them on the altar of Mammon?
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No one would send his/her kids to schools to private schools, if informed that they are disguised as public schools yet privately funded and managed. I don’t even call it a school if it a founding organization is opening schools for profit-making instead of quality instruction; 2) fails to comply with local/national education law; 3) fails to pay teachers and working staff health/medicare, offered paid leave, and overtime pay; and 4)sexually, racially harasses/discriminates teachers, students, and working staff.
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Silly people:
Teachingeconomist knows better than the teachers, school principals, health workers and other professionals in Liberia what is good (and not good) for Liberia.
After all, he’s an omniscient economist (forgive the redundancy)
The people of Liberia have no clue what is good (and bad) for their country.
After all, they are just ignorant Africans, waiting to be educated by the White man.
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Long post. The American Enterprise Institute is using c-span to help market Bridge International in Liberia. https://www.c-span.org/video/?430887-1/charter-schools-developing-countries&start=1621
For Liberia, the marketing centers on “partnership schools” not really different from charter schoools here. If you don’t want to see and listen to the whole video, notice who participated.
George K. Werner, minister of education of the Republic of Liberia. Helped launch the for-profit “Partnership Schools.” Co-chair of Liberia’s Health Workforce Development Taskforce. Master’s in social work, University of Pennsylvania; B.A. Marist College, now the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya.
Seth Andrew, founder of Democracy Builders NYC (enlists parents to promote educational choice) and Democracy charter schools. Helping Bridge International Academies launch charter-like schools in Liberia, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and India. Former senior adviser on technology for Arne Duncan. Began as a special educator in South Korea and Massachusetts. Ed.M. from Harvard University, B.A. from Brown University.
Amy Black, executive vice president of global education at Results for Development (R4D). Helped launch Teach For All, the international version of Teach for America. Former Washington, DC manager for Teach For America. Former State Department fellow for two years, including a six-month assignment in South Africa.
Alejandro Caballero, evaluates investments in private education companies for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World Bank. A former vice president with Deutsche Bank AG (worked in Singapore, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka). Previous positions with Booz Allen Hamilton, and Goldman Sachs. M.B.A. Stanford, master’s Stanford Graduate School of Education. Add B.A. degrees in law and in economic science/management from ICADE, Madrid.
Nat Malkus, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Specializes in school finance, charter schools, school choice, and the future of standardized testing. Former senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Ph.D. in education policy and leadership, University of Maryland; B.A. in historical studies, Covenant College, four years middle school teaching in Maryland
I downloaded and edited the text. I was struck by several claims about the costs, profitability, and virtues of Bridge International and the reasoning of the Liberian minister of education, George K. Werner. In the 2016-17 school year, 28,000 Liberian students attended 93 “partnership” schools run by international providers.
Seth Andrew: “I just left the Obama administration where we really spent a lot of time, chief technology officer and others, thinking about technology in government. I can tell you we’re still way behind where the private sector was in thinking about technology. Most of us don’t use government tech in our daily lives. We use private tech in our lives.”
“Bridge has taken best practices from the developed world, American charter schools and delivered it through a very low-tech solution, very cheap e-reader, black and white tablet (costs $50 to manufacture in China). You get content that is the same content as kids might be getting in Washington, D.C., Boston or Cambridge, Massachusetts. You’re getting it on a 2-g signal in black and white in a rural Liberian classroom. That is not a thing the government of Liberia figured out to do….That is one of the reasons Bridge has potential not to be just an incremental change but a leapfrogging change.”
Seth Andrew. “I will say quickly about Bridge, the bulk of their schools, 500 across the world, are low fee private schools, $7 a month. They’re getting a world-class education.”
George Werner: “Let me just … add to what Seth said. With the exception of maybe of Singapore and Vietnam, I don’t know any country that educates poor children with perfection. Not the United States, not the UK. In the U.S., if government would deliver perfect public schools you would have no need for charter schools. If the UK government could do similarly, there would no need for the academies in the UK.”
“What that tells me is that governments are failing to educate poor children. There is a need for the private sector. …We’re educating a majority of our children for the private sector, for the jobs of today, and the jobs of tomorrow. All the more reason why the private sector needs to get involved in how we educate our children. “
“We chose the word ‘partnership.’ There are things government does really well, policy platform, regulation, and education as a public good. Those things government can do well. But day-to-day management—assessments, planning outcomes, systems of accountabilities—government doesn’t do as well as the private sector does. We partnered with private providers to strengthening government where it is weakest if you like. That is the essence of the partnership with us.”
Seth Andrew: (On the need for profits in the private sector). Take $50, per student for a year, $2,000 a classroom of 40 kids for a classroom a year. Wage bill, $140 a month. $1500 a year, $500 total for materials, textbooks, technology, everything else. … the tablet (for the teacher) is $50. This is doable. This is absolutely possible. We’ve shown it at scale in Kenya. Starting to get there in Liberia. But it requires a lot more students to be in systems like this…before you get to the scale point where it is actually sustainable (and profitable).
…Let me give you one more example…In Liberia, they don’t have resources for science labs….In the developed world you can see a virtual reality science lab for the cost of a $50 head-set. In the developing world we can’t imagine that, because that math doesn’t add up. But you can get a cardboard version of the same thing for $3…bringing quality down a little bit; but the content being delivered to my students in Washington, D.C. is actually the same exact content delivered to kids in Liberia and for a $3 cardboard head-set and a phone, the principal gets to download lessons plans. It is a matter of thinking how we spend money and what we spend money on.”
Here are some visual examples of the Bridge curriculum resources. (The exact same content as in the US?). This website also lists 16 key investors in Bridge International including Bill Gates Investments, the Chan/Zuckerberg Initative, International Finance Corporation of the World Bank http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/academics/tools/
Liberia will still have teachers to deliver the curriculum, but in the US professional credentials are being diminished in importance, especially by cuts in funding for public schools and the promotion of low-cost online, computer-based and teacher-proof programs, “brought to scale” for profitability.
Consider ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy for children ages 2–8. For a subscription fee of $7.99 per month or $79.99/year you receive an app (for ipad or iphone) that can be used by up to three children. The app offers “a standards-aligned curriculum (reading, math, social studies, art, music, more) intended to build “a strong foundation for academic success.”
The curriculum is being expanded to higher ages/grades levels and for use internationally through a program that teaches English as a second language. This is a patented delivery system build on a legacy of programming from the creators of the NeoPets online, sold in 2005 to Viacom’s MTV Networks Groups. Patents are noted at https://www.cbinsights.com/company/age-of-learning
In effect, the US could well be the next big market for Bridge International, with some clever up-scaling in stylistics of the “same exact content” they are delivering in Africa and elsewhere.
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