Writing in The Atlantic, Erika Christakis describes “the war on public schools” that readers of this blog know well, but that has been sold to the public as “reform.”
She writes:
“Few people care more about individual students than public-school teachers do, but what’s really missing in this dystopian narrative is a hearty helping of reality: 21st-century public schools, with their record numbers of graduates and expanded missions, are nothing close to the cesspools portrayed by political hyperbole. This hyperbole was not invented by Trump or DeVos, but their words and proposals have brought to a boil something that’s been simmering for a while—the denigration of our public schools, and a growing neglect of their role as an incubator of citizens.
“Americans have in recent decades come to talk about education less as a public good, like a strong military or a noncorrupt judiciary, than as a private consumable. In an address to the Brookings Institution, DeVos described school choice as “a fundamental right.” That sounds appealing. Who wouldn’t want to deploy their tax dollars with greater specificity? Imagine purchasing a gym membership with funds normally allocated to the upkeep of a park.
“My point here is not to debate the effect of school choice on individual outcomes: The evidence is mixed, and subject to cherry-picking on all sides. I am more concerned with how the current discussion has ignored public schools’ victories, while also detracting from their civic role. Our public-education system is about much more than personal achievement; it is about preparing people to work together to advance not just themselves but society. Unfortunately, the current debate’s focus on individual rights and choices has distracted many politicians and policy makers from a key stakeholder: our nation as a whole. As a result, a cynicism has taken root that suggests there is no hope for public education. This is demonstrably false. It’s also dangerous.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s also REALLY poor representation. If ed reform lawmakers are fighting a war against public schools then they aren’t serving 90% of their constituents. This idea they have that they can serve some imaginary, proposed, privatized system for 20 years and denigrate and ignore the schools that exist means they aren’t currently serving public school families.
That matters because 90% of families ARE public school families.
They can’t unilaterally decide they won’t serve the families who use the schools they no longer support. That’s an outrageous decision. They’re quite literally not doing the main job they were hired to do, because of a personal or ideological preference.
They can’t “serve” their preferred system that doesn’t (yet) exist while also serving public school families. Their preferred system doesn’t include public schools.
We’re seeing the effects of this. Ohio PUBLIC schools have dropped in ranking each and every year these folks have been in power. The same is true in Michigan. We’re talking about 90% of people in these states. That’s really poor representation and brutally unfair to the families in the unfashionable public school sector.
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Excellent post, but does not answer the critical question of “why”. Without answering that question, we go around in circles, with no solutions in sight.
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Why? Greed is #1.
Ideology of private is always best is #2.
Bought by Walton, Broad, DeVos or Koch is #3
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GREED is right, Diane. GREEDY, GREEDY, GREEDY..this is why that creep Zuckerberg wants a piece of the action. It’s all so tawdry.
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Why what? To what is the “why” referring? TIA, Duane
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They not only don’t serve their constituents, they seem to go out of their way to screw them.
They sold Common Core as something we had to do to get lawmakers support for public schools. Go along and they’ll support our schools. All they wanted was higher standards and more difficult tests.
The “support” never arrived. In fact, they’re WORSE. It doesn’t matter what public schools do. The war against them continues. Public schools have adopted each and every agenda item these people come up with and every year they launch a political campaign attacking public schools. The newest campaign “Reinventing Schools” requires every public school to become a charter school. That’s the new measure. The only way to remain in the good graces of ed reform lawmakers is to privatize your school. I mean, come on. They didn’t tell the public that! NONE of them got these jobs vowing to privatize public schools.
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This was in the Atlantic? Wow.
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Laurene Powell Jobs recently bought The Atlantic. My guess is the ownership has not yet transferred to her.
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But the Atlantic was all out rephormy long before Ms. Jobs. Remember, they’re the ones who touted the New Orleans “miracle”.
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The Atlantic is (was) owned by the Bradley Family of DC, who are huge supporters of TFA and charter schools. I don’t know how any pro-public school articles slipped by them.
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Yesterday we were all celebrating that DC graciously declined to directly attack NINETY PER CENT of US schools.
That is ridiculous. We shouldn’t be begging “our” representatives to NOT harm our kid’s public schools. In fact, they are supposed to ADD VALUE.
We shouldn’t be asking what ed reform declined to do to harm public schools. We should be asking for a list of how ed reform benefits the 90% of schools that are public schools. If the answer is “nothing” then we need representation.
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I believe that not buying the Trump-DeVos agenda fully is a positive sign. What they did was compromise. Some representatives know that they will be in trouble at home if they abandon public education. More representatives need to suffer the consequences of joining the attack on public education. Too many representatives feel safe and independent due to extreme gerrymandering. Democrats recently filed a lawsuit claiming that gerrymandering violates the Constitution.
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I’m a public school parent and I went along with Common Core and my son obediently sits for the tests these people hatched and imposed on every public school in the country.
His school has lost funding each and every year since 2010.
When, exactly, do ed reformers “support” public schools? Can they give me an estimated date when this fabled “support” might actually appear? We’re jumping thru all the hoops as fast as we can! Can they give me measure of when, exactly, they might see their way clear to serving the 90% of kids in public schools? Because I’m getting tired of paying public employees who oppose the schools most kids attend. I think that’s ludicrous.
I want a real advocate. I think the 90% of families who are public school families deserve one. We’ve heard plenty from charter and voucher advocates. When do we hear from public school advocates?
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Thanks for your advocacy and passion, Chiara. If only we had a major politician as committed to public schools as you and the rest of us (here on Diane’s blog) are.
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Chiara,
Right here. This is where you hear public school advocates every day.
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They’ve really done a number on the public, I must say. The President of the United States and the US Department of Education proudly take the position they are opposed to public schools.
This is not only acceptable in this club they’ve created, it’s admired. They see their role as opponents of the schools 90% of people attend.
Utter and complete capture and it gets worse with each successive administration. They are currently holding “forums” on “reinventing public schools” without a single participant from public schools. It doesn’t even occur to them to ASK. It’s just a given that we’ll be “dragged, kicking and screaming” as President Obama said with whatever scheme they come up with. The President never even considered that maybe “dragging” 90% of people isn’t the way to go. It was unimaginable to him that families might actually support public schools.
I cannot imagine the arrogance it takes to “reinvent” a system that serves 50 million people without even inviting any of them to the planning sessions, but that’s what we have in this “movement”.
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Columnist James Gill of the New Orleans Advocate today has an interesting piece about the New Orleans inspector general who is likely to be ousted soon in large part for his investigation of Sewerage & Water Board malfeasance and corruption. The S&WB is one of the most politically powerful agencies in the city, which relies on it’s systems of open and closed canals to survive. Gill’s analysis of why the IG is controversial mirrors many of the arguments Diane and others have been making here for years:
“S&WB members are appointed by the mayor, with council approval, from a list drawn up by local universities and other worthy institutions. Members can serve only two four-year terms, but, so long as they are in office, are untouchable. When the board was established in 1903, its autonomy was guaranteed, supposedly as a safeguard against the corruption that riddled city government.
“Ever since, the S&WB has been demonstrating the fallacy of the proposition that government should be run like a business. The board provides daily proof that, if public employees are not subject to the normal constraints of democracy, there is no incentive to handle tax revenues wisely or efficiently. The S&WB has relieved the public of vast amounts of money to finance fabulous employee benefits and pensions, while the recent flood exposed a level of incompetence and dereliction that brought the careers of its director and other top management to an end.”
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…its systems…
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GregB “. . . the fallacy of the proposition that government should be run like a business. The board provides daily proof that, if public employees are not subject to the normal constraints of democracy, there is no incentive to handle tax revenues wisely or efficiently.”
But HOW IS THIS: “. . . relieved the public of vast amounts of money to finance fabulous employee benefits and pensions,” RELATED TO THIS: “while the recent flood exposed a level of incompetence and dereliction that brought the careers of its director and other top management to an end”?
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CBK: I’m not sure what you are asking.
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GregB Okay–are they saying that “certain” people are involved in corruption by getting more money and benefits than is warranted? or are they just making a “hit” on teachers and employees and painting AUTHENTIC benefits with the broad-brush of corruption. If the later, how handy is that? Or have I missed something?
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Sorry, you missed something. This is not about education, it is about the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, which is responsible for flood control in the city. The author was making the same argument about how running it like a business doesn’t work for an agency that is supposed to work for the public good that we make about public education. Just another example of how running government functions like a business does not work.
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The problem is the rights of the few are trumping the public good. You have yours. That’s great, but now I don’t have mine and neither does anyone else in my neighborhood.
What parents who choose charter schools forget that even if theirs is one of the good ones, they are taking away from the public school systems for the good of one versus the good of many.
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Succinct!
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Or, to paraphrase Betsy DeVos’s statement today on Title IX: “If everything is for the public good, then nothing is.”
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To Fros56 regarding “You have yours…”
You are spot on! It is so disheartening to see that so many in the top 20 to 30% socioeconomically seem to have no sense of responsibility towards the good of anyone else. Here in AZ, we have many for-profit charter organizations that don’t even pretend to be interested in teaching disadvantaged kids. I see fancy for-profit charters sprouting up all over wealthier zip codes. Last year, my daughter’s perfectly lovely nurturing neighborhood public school saw a drop in enrollment of 80 kids largely due to the over-proliferation of charters. One of these for profit groups, BASIS, games the system so effectively it regularly shows up as a top 5 “public” school by US News. It’s students are almost exclusively the children of well educated affluent parents willing to commit several hours a night to completing the heavy loads of homework required for a child to remain in the school. Something like 60% or more of sixth graders transfer out before graduating high school because of the rigorous demands required to advance to the next grade. They also charge parents $1500 a year in addition to the disproportionately higher per pupil funding they receive from the state in comparison to traditional public schools. BASIS and many schools like it are essentially for-profit publically financed tuition charging schools for the gifted and/or exceptionally disciplined. It is obscene that people are getting rich off schools like these in a state regularly at the very bottom in public school funding. The thing that terrifies me is that I see so many middle and upper middle class families fleeing their traditional public schools for these type of charters, and once enough of them do, game over. We will officially have a two tier system of have and have-nots.
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Too many people take public education for granted. Our public schools helped build our nation. They continue to do an outstanding job of unifying our people. Yesterday, Vice news had a story on how well a lot of the DACA young people are doing, and it makes no economic sense to deport them.
As far as test scores go, America needs to understand that any report on national scores represents an average. We have lots of public school graduates that compare well to the rest of the world. Our country cannot and will not score at the top as we are a diverse nation with a significant level of poverty. If politicians are so concerned about scores, they should fight for families to be paid a living wage which will improve scores. Charters and vouchers will not improve scores unless schools schools are highly selective, and public schools could improve scores too by being highly selective. The fact is scores do not matter. What matters is that young people are prepared to live independent lives and understand the responsibilities of living in a democratic republic.
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retired teacher,
You hit the nail! Your comments are so right on. Thank you. AGREE.
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Diane Glad to see this article come out, especially in the Atlantic. The “news” of corporate and oligarchic takeover, and the correlate demise of public schools, is slowly seeping out there and getting into parents’ awareness.
But I agree also that those who are still in the dark, so to speak, need to be constantly hit with the brick of truth, and it should have real names plastered all over it: Koch, Walton, DeVos, etc., and now Ms. Jobs. If 90% of parents and school boards knew that a small group of private citizens were trying to denigrate and then eliminate their children’s public education (in other words, that they were being scammed by a relatively few rich and ideological people; and that those people were already in government positions), and things were, as we speak, changing from how parents remember their own schooling, my guess is the vast majority of them would rise up loud and clear.
We need a counter-campaign where educating goes beyond the classroom and into the community. The vast “They” needs to know how to think of the New Slick Ad Campaign that is soon to flood the “air” of their communications venues. (I’ve seen some of it already, but I think much more is coming.)
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If someone on the left claimed a “right” as did DeVos, the American right would erupt with a chorous of grousing about people being more interested in their rights than their responsibilities. So allow me to put that show on the other foot. If some people want the right to choose a private school experience for their children, let them assume the financial responsibility of giving that right to others. I would love to teach half a load like teachers in private schools. I teach 139 kids a day. Do I get to see them write as often as I need to? Retorical question.
It is time for charter school advocates to admit that their private solution is more expensive than what we have now. If they claim it works, these advocates should be asking for a tax increase on those who can pay. Have you heard that lately? Thought not.
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If there is no hope for America’s public schools. there is no hope for the United States or its Constitutional Republic.
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“One-way ticket to a desert Island”
We are millions
They are few
All their billions
Just won’t do
When they screw
The rank and file:
Banished to
A desert isle
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Banish the billionaires to that desert island?
If yes, a desert island would be too good for them. Send the billionaires to Mars on a one-way ticket with no return and send tons of potatoes and ketchup with them.
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