Charter promoters have long argued that traditional forms of accountability like auditing and financial and academic oversight are unnecessary because the magic of the market will hold them accountable. If parents enroll their children, that is all the accountability that is necessary.
It has been a rough day at my house. The IRS is auditing me and needs me to send them money now. My computer has a virus. My Microsoft Windows is expired and will shut down soon. And if I don’t re-enter my personal information, my email, Netflix, and bank accounts will all be shut down. The only good news is that I still have a chance to buy great insurance, and I’m still waiting to hear back from that Nigerian prince.
Why do phone and online scammers keep at it, long after the vast majority of folks have heard about the most common scams, and even your mother knows not to say “yes” to a robocaller? Why don’t these scammers think, “Time to change my business model?” Because if scammers get a return on even one hit out of 10,000, that’s more than enough to keep them in business.
Charter school advocates have long argued that one reason that charters don’t need much formal government oversight is that they are subject to a greater accountability, that they must answer to parents who can “vote with their feet.” But the feet of charter parents don’t exert very much pressure.
The vast majority of charter school operators have nothing in common with phone scammers, but the same basic market principle applies.
Take, for instance, the Success Academy chain of New York City. New York City schools have an enrollment of roughly 1.1 million students; Success Academy has roughly 18,000, plus a waiting list. Over 1 million students have already voted with their feet against Success Academy, but there are no signs that SA head Eva Moskowitz is worried about tweaking the school’s approach to entice some of those million students to “vote” differently. She doesn’t need them. Nor do I suspect she’d bat an eye if even a dozen parents came to her and said, “Change this rule or we are pulling our kids out of here.”
What do you think she would say?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Posted Peter’s article itself at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Why-Market-Forces-Will-Not-in-General_News-Education_Education-Costs_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis-191110-915.html
with 2 comments:
comment one
Read this and learn about the privatization of education in New Orleans:
Jan Resseger is one of the keenest analysts of the assault on public education today.
In this post, https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2019/11/04/21745/ she reviews Andrea Gabor’s excellent article in Harper’s magazine about the privatized district of New Orleans.
comment 2
Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum reports. https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/12/09/city-fund-seven-cities-atlanta-indianapolis-newark-denver-san-antonio-st-louis-nashville/ that vandals from the billionaire-funded “City Fund” have targeted seven cities, where they will use their millions to try to destroy public schools and to finance a takeover of the local school board.
“The City Fund has already given grants to organizations and schools in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Newark, Denver, San Antonio, St. Louis, and Nashville, according to one of the group’s founders, Neerav Kingsland. Those grants amount to $15 million of the $189 million the group has raised, he told Chalkbeat.
“City Fund staffers have also founded a 501(c)(4) organization called Public School Allies, according to an email obtained by Chalkbeat, which Kingsland confirmed. That setup will allow the group’s members to have more involvement in politics and lobbying, activities limited for traditional nonprofits”
“In their ideal scenario, parents would be able to choose among schools that have autonomy to operate as they see fit, including charter schools. In turn, schools are judged by outcomes (which usually means test scores). The ones deemed successful are allowed to grow, and the less-successful ones are closed or dramatically restructured.”
This is known as the “portfolio model,” which encourages the local board to close low-scoring public schools with charter schools. When the charter schools fail, they are replaced by other charter schools.
“A version of that strategy is already in place in Denver and Indianapolis. Those cities have large charter sectors and enrollment systems that include both district and charter schools In others, like San Antonio, Atlanta, and Camden, struggling district schools have been turned over to charter operators.
Charter advocates are no different than those who say “We don’t need any health insurance regulations because if your health insurance does something like drop you if you get sick, it will eventually go out of business.” (Wrong)
Charter advocates are no different than those who say “We don’t need any regulations over how cars are built, because if too many children are killed in accidents where they might of survived, people will stop buying those cars.”
Charter advocates are like those who say “We are no longer going to license electricians. Because we know that if an electrician turns out to work on a bunch of houses that catch on fire, people will stop using him and he’ll go out of business.”
Charter advocates are like those who say “Anyone who wants to say they are a pediatrician should be able to practice medicine and we are sure that if a lot of kids end up dying, people who know that will stop using him and he’ll have to go practice somewhere else.” They care more about the people who can make money practicing medicine before they are found out than they do about the children who are harmed.
And they are ignorant of how capitalism works. Because economists know that if you have a wild free market, you end up in place where people don’t know if they are purchasing a lemon or something worth paying for, and the very bad products drive out the very good because they are “cheaper”.
^^ if too many children are killed in accidents where they might HAVE survived
Your post shows how inadequate the free market is in the areas of health, well-being, and social justice. What is the point of paying taxes if government is going to allow corporations to poison, harm and rig the system against people? It is possible to regulate capitalism. Scandinavia, the Netherlands and New Zealand are regulated capitalist countries with support for social safety nets for vulnerable citizens.
Thank you for your comment, retired teacher. True.
But keeping public school system as is will not bring it closer to the likes in European countries. Which is why simply defending public schools against privatizers is not enough. The system must be overhauled, from funding (federal funding for all schools) to curricula (federal standardized curricula, which must be developed by knowledgeable scientists and pedagogues) to teachers’ prep (require master’s degree in specific field, say math; require pedagogical degree; get rid of fluff) to equipment (national building codes) to graduation requirements (some states has none, other has only Algebra 2, many states do not require any science).
If you are using public taxpayer $, you should have the same oversight, auditing, and open meeting requirements as public schools. Period.
Right on Peter Greene, an angle I hadn’t even thought of.
I always get tripped up first by the complete lie in the “parallel” with business. It ain’t true there either. Even in a “fantasy free-market” block of cheek-by-jowl restaurants, each of which might go under if just one family walked with their feet from A to B, the only “choice” factor is palate. Perhaps parallel to a charter’s pedagogy or style. Unlike with charters in many states (let alone voucher schools), there’s a platform of laws/ regs for the whole block ensuring safe number of clientele in the space, fresh foodstuffs, proper storage & handling, untainted water, sterilized serving utensils, absence of vermin or even cigarette smoke. Whereas the lack of formal govt oversight at charters/ vouchers means your kids may be squeezed into spaces from which they cannot exit quickly in an emergency, there perhaps to be served moldy curriculum delivered by unvetted servers in a completely undigestible manner. When public schools do this (as is said of poor areas of poor states), there is at least legal recourse.
There is no “free market.” That is the Milton and Rosa Friedman Myth perpetuated by corporate and business leaders who lobby for every perk they can get. One result of this mythology is a Trillion dollar debt that is now used as a reason for not investing in health care, public education, a living wage for workers, and so on. The fat cats are insulted if you DARE to question the myth of free market capitalism or try to make a case for regulation for the benefit of the public. Now the free marketers are seeing children and their performance in school as an investment opportunity. These financial products are being marketed as if the best way to finance preschool, all you need to do is make sure that you eliminate special education students from your “pay for success” contract, and you can make big bucks. see 2. James J. Heckman, https://heckmanequation.org/resource/the-heckman-curve/ His Bio is at the website
Jorge Luis García and others, “Quantifying the Life-cycle Benefits of a Prototypical Early Childhood Program” (The Heckman Equation, 2017), available at https://heckmanequation.org/resource/lifecycle-benefits-influential-early-childhood-program/
Metrics from another promoter of Social Impact Bonds also known as Pay for Success contracts. See Robinhood’s metrics used to estimate the worth of “a high-quality preschool program.” These figures are used to market SIBs as an investment, including preschool education.
You can bet the metrics are not used by politicians to argue for federal or state investments in public programs serving all pre-school children. https://robinhoodorg-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/04/Metrics-Equations-for-Website_Sept-2014.pdf
“New York City schools have an enrollment of roughly 1.1 million students; Success Academy has roughly 18,000, plus a waiting list. Over 1 million students have already voted with their feet against Success Academy” — this would be true only if Success Academy had 1 million capacity.
“but there are no signs that SA head Eva Moskowitz is worried about tweaking the school’s approach to entice some of those million students to “vote” differently. She doesn’t need them.” — exactly, she does not need them and therefore does not need to tweak her approach.
That is not true. Eva Moskowitz is constantly advertising, marketing, and recruiting. I live in a neighborhood where a new “Success Academy” opened, and her flyers, posters, and ads were everywhere, including the supermarket.
Um, I believe your rules of engagement, spelled out most recently, are something like (1) do not blame teachers, (2) do not insult you personally, (3) do not swear. As I see it, I have broken none of the above rules. Why you did not let my comment through? It is a completely valid observation. Let me repeat it:
If you see a Ferrari ad, this does not mean that Ferrari is ready to sell a million cars a year. In fact, they sell only about 8 thousands a year, and yes, there is a waiting list made of a particular clientele who are willing to pay big money for a car that used to require a complete overhaul just after 50 thousand miles, not sure is it more reliable nowadays. But this is how they like it. Same with Success Academy.
BA, I find you so annoying and condescending that it is hard to post anything you write.
OK Way off topic but veterans on my mind today 11-11 — and war in general. Just remembering my Dad and father-in-law who were both WWII vets. Dad was younger & saw just the tail-end, but never forgot witnessing Japan’s signing of surrender from the deck of his destroyer, & stayed in touch lifelong w/vet buddies.
My father-in-law had a much worse war. As part of the Signal Corps, he was first onsite into Euro homes after bombings, to dismantle any communications eqpt. He rarely talked about it, other than saying he’d seen hell, and it turned him against any and every type of war. It was a trauma he kept quiet inside lifelong. Back in the day we all understood that. Today we expect veterans to just pick up the pieces of their lives and get on with it. Our society has normalized war by eliminating the draft, and conducting endless military conflict: it’s “war” just for “them” (foreigners, and volunteer soldiers)– “military conflict” (a budget item) for society.
“We should reinstitute Veteran’s Day as Armistice Day day to honor peace. We could thank soldiers who lay down their weapons, and teachers who strike for smaller class sizes and fair housing.” — https://truthout.org/articles/as-a-veteran-i-refuse-to-celebrate-war/