Jelmer Evers, Dutch scholar and teacher, draws together the seemingly disparate strands that connect the rise of neo-fascist movements, attacks on democracy, growing inequality, and the oligarchs’ determination to privatize public schools.
He writes:
“Rent-seeking and privatization are not just confined to the prison system. Almost every aspect of society has been opened up for markets and investors. In ‘The Privatization of Education: a Political Economy of Global Economy Reform’ (full text) Antoni Verger et all show that this is a global phenomenon in many guises, and that everywhere “individual and positional goals start to overshadow social and collective goals” These policies spread throughout very deliberate informal policy networks and more formal international frameworks.
“A telling example are the PISA tests. In the excellent ‘The Global Education Race: taking the measure of PISA and international testing’ Sam Sellar, Greg Thompson and David Rutkowski delve into the complex world of international testing. Many questions should be asked about what is actually being tested and what kind of conclusion can acutally be drawn from the data. They make clear that it these tests are not just about the tests, but just as much about the stories being created around them. And with the advent of ‘Big Data’ this is something we have to deal with. As they state: “the future of public education will depend on the creation of publics who understand enough about these technologies to debate their benefits, dangers and impacts on the collective project of teaching the next generation”.
“We must take that one step further and call for ‘publics’- and certainly professions- who understand the philosophies, histories, political economy and sociology around public discourses and for teachers around public education specifically. That is also the case in what I would deem the most important book about education that I’ve read the last year, Dennis Shirley’s ‘New Imperatives of Educational Change: achievement with integrity’. We should aspire to do the best for our children, but we also should do what is right and virtuous. And privatization, top-down accountability, casualization of the teaching profession, an infantile narrow look on ‘what works’ damage our children, our schools, our profession, and most importantly they do untold damage to our society and our democracy. As Yong Zhao states in a very good- and hopefully influential- article ‘What works might hurt: side-effects in education’ you have to look at side-effects and opportunity costs.
“And the opportunity costs of privatization and marketization of education are huge, and have big repercussions beyond education itself. If you are serious about education as a force for equity you have to take into account what your parties’ policies are doing to society and its children. You have to take into account that policies that undermining public education as a public institution- governed for and by the people- will damage everything that you stand for. So if you see a call for further flexibility, shortening, practice of teacher education, and call it ‘training’ be wary. Yes, teaching is a practice, but it is also a profession informed by science, philosophy and reflection.
“Sadly there are many forces undermining public education. From Silicon Valley, venture capitalists to right-wing politicians, sometimes under different heading: free-markets, pro-choice, efficiency or religious freedom. But it was the ‘New Left’- Democrats, New Labour, European social democrats- who have started us on this road. One could say they’ve softened up public education for the state that it is in in many countries around the world. This is now being exploited by right-wing governments, corporations and the 1%. It’s ironic that parties that were originally founded in the interest of labour have been the vehicles in it’s destruction.
“But this didn’t happen overnight and by itself. There have been deliberate and long running attempts to capture the state by moneyed interests, rent-seeking. In her book ‘Dark Money: the hiden history of billionaires’ Jane Mayer uncovers the strategies and overlapping policy networks, think tanks, “charities” of the Koch Brothers to revamp the United States into their right-wing image, through organisations like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, and numerous super-PACs. This has only accelerated after the ‘Citizens United’ ruling, which gave corporations and rich individuals unprecedented possibilities to buy influence in the political process. The capture of the state, the rent-seeking that van Bavel, Rodrik and Scheidel warn us about, has turned America increasingly into an oligarchy. As the final quote of Charles Koch in the book painfully illustrates: “I just want my fair share — which is all of it.” This is why North-Carolina is not a democracy anymore. Institutions are failing and the oligarchs are winning. And it isn’t restricted to the other side of the Atlantic.”
With the appointment of Betsy DeVos, he writes, the oligarchs have captured control of the federal government.
My view: Our present dire situation is far from terminal. Resistance is growing. Betsy has stripped the veneer from the so-called reform movement. She is all-in for privatization. There is nothing liberal, progressive, or even modern about her worldview.
It is only a matter of time until the marauders and oligarchs get their comeuppance.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think it’s true that DeVos really harms “the movement” not just because she’s far to the Right of what ed reform purports to be but also because she refuses to admit that there is ANY downside risk or cost to privatization, and that’s just not rational.
She doesn’t seem to realize that we live in these places and we SEE it- up close. This nonsense with comparing schools to food trucks just doesn’t make sense. It’s a fantasy.
Local public school leaders don’t have that luxury, the luxury of an abstract ideology:
“In the Chariho Regional School District, $1.1 million was budgeted for charter schools in 2017-2018. The 97 students who attended the charter schools could have been educated in a high-performing Chariho school with only a small amount of additional funding needed for supplies and materials, if that.
Chariho’s expenses are not reduced because these 97 students, who come out of six buildings and thirteen grade levels, leave the district. No teachers or busing can be eliminated and all costs related to the maintenance of buildings remain. Thus, this year, the taxpayers of Charlestown, Richmond, and Hopkinton are paying about $1.1 million more in property taxes than they would have if there were no school choice options.”
I’m not even asking her to recognize “opportunity cost”, which while valid is difficult to measure. She won’t even admit actual funding costs. It’s free! It’s all free! All we have to do is have “the money” follow “the child” and….presto! The recklessness of this takes my breath away.
If DeVos and David Osborne and the rest of them got their way and every public school in the country shut down in the next decade it would be a DISASTER because they haven’t even considered ANY of these costs. According to them it’s all free and it’s all upside.
http://www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20180111/my-turn-barry-ricci-choice-costs-us-too-much
Wow! Go read the entire article. Please, I would love to see a mountain of responses.
Prove that you can conquer the urge to skim through. READ THE WHOLE THING!
I did read the entire article, and now I feel like my head will explode! This article is a great overview of globalization, income inequality and their impact on world economies and policies. GERM is mostly certainly a byproduct of our oligarchy. To make matters worse, our oligarchy is wealthier and more powerful than those in most other countries. Perhaps this explains why our union membership of about 12-13% is one of the lowest of most industrialized nations. America has suffered from “hyper-globalization” because the uber wealthy oligarchs have a strangled hold on our so called elected representatives.
Other industrialized nations. particularly Scandinavia, have fared better under globalization as they have laws that limit campaign spending, and they limit the impact that the wealthy can have on the system so that they remain a democracy. In our country we are rolling back any laws that protect consumers, social justice and access to information.at the behest of the oligarchs. BPA, banned in all of Europe and Canada, is a perfect example. BPA, a known carcinogen that also plays a role in diabetes, remains in most of the canned food available in the US. Any reasonable government that represents people would ban it as well. Instead, BPA is in our food because it allows corporations to make more money off us. The main interest our country has in our people is that they remain obedient consumers; their health, rights and education are no longer priorities.
Being one of those people with a peripatetic mind, a while back I asked myself if the nations police forces could also be targeted for privatization, and sadly the answer is yes. Primarily, the arguments are the same libertarian claptrap we’ve seen used to man-splain the need to impose “market forces” on education. The true goal seems to be the further Balkanization of the individual, dividing them from those who protect and serve, and the imposition of a corporate security apparatus that is not guided by and does not answer to the constitution. Law enforcement community beware!
Two quotes jumped out at me:
“One thing we need to do according to Snyder is: #2 Defend your institutions. “It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about — a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union — and take its side.”
and
“In “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.” (Naomi Klein) shows us how we may start building the alternatives we so desperately need “In the absence of a progressive alternative, Trump had a free hand to connect with skeptical voters by saying: I feel your pain. (…) leaders who are seen as representing the failed neoliberal status quo are no match for the demagogues and neo-fascists. Only a bold and genuinely redistributive progressive agenda can offer real answers to inequality and the crises in democracy, while directing popular rage where it belongs: at those who have benefited so extravagantly from the auctioning off of public wealth; the polluting of land, air, and water; and the deregulation of the financial sphere.” This has always been the case, and the solutions and the way forward have never been far away. “…responses to crises that unfolded in times when people dared to dream big, out loud, in public — explosions of utopian imagination.” Now “is the time to leap, because small steps won’t cut it.”
Those who read this blog have nearly chosen public education as the institution they care about. The challenge I believe we face is finding a means of developing a “bold and genuinely redistributive progressive agenda (that) can offer real answers to inequality and the crises in democracy” that the outraged public can see as a better way forward than the GOP-lite agenda put forth by the neoliberal DNC. If all we have to choose between in 2020 is, say, Cuomo vs. Trump, we will not be able to protect the institution we care about.
Oops, I meant to write: “Those who read this blog have CLEARLY chosen public education as the institution they care about.” I have to proof read more carefully before hitting the “post comment” button!