Julian Vasquez Heilig, Jameson Brewer, and Frank Adamson have written a peer-reviewed analysis of the politics of school choice. As Heilig wrote in his description of the analysis, “Modern notions of “markets” and “choice” in schooling stem from the libertarian ideas Milton Friedman espoused in the 1950s. Considering the underlying politics of school choice, it is important to examine the ramifications of neoliberal and collective ideology on market-based school choice research. In this chapter we point out that much of the research suggesting positive findings is continually conducted and promoted by neoliberal ideologically-driven organizations.” I would add to their analysis that Milton Friedman was not the sole originator of the ideology of “school choice.” As I wrote in the New York Review of Books, Friedman shares that dubious distinction with white Southern politicians who were adamantly opposed to the Brown decision and desegregation.
This is a well analyzed post on the monetization of public education. To hammers everything is a nail, and to neoliberals everything is a market. as a result, they manipulate and politic to turn a public service into a commodity. This study traces the connection between billionaires and school choice. The relationship is a direct one in which the wealthy with weaponized wealth use the money to purchase policy. The authors also note that these wealthy neoliberals have bought “research,” often not peer reviewed, with cherry picked data to confirm the righteousness of school choice. This is the ‘echo chamber’ that Chiara often mentions. It is bought and paid for ‘research.’ The goal is to put a positive spin on the dismantling of public education.
“Inevitably the market- based education reform movement has run into political challenges that are linked directly to academia’s and the broad citizenry’s desire for truth.”
The public is slowly catching on the the Jim Crow objectives of school choice. Those whose public school systems have been strip mined are speaking out on the dirty dealings of the profiteers that are monetizing mostly black and brown students and transferring them to highly segregated charter schools. It is scandalous and tragic that public dollars leave the public schools that serve the most students and are transferred into private pockets to enrich the already wealthy.
Today so-called reformers are working with complicit governors to expand both unaccountable charter schools and vouchers that taxpayers are being forced to support. There is no longer a high minded claim of helping students escape “failing” schools. This is a smash and grab on public education, and many Democrats remain largely silent and refuse to intervene, even though they control the House, Senate and the Presidency.
It’s really collapsing into complete incoherence.
The same ed reformers who are aggressively lobbying all over the country to publicly fund private schools and impose no regulation of any kind on those schools, are at the same time passing laws to police what is taught in public schools.
No discussion or debate of this contradiction at all in the ed reform echo chamber.
If they’re not going to regulate the private schools they prefer and are publicly funding, why should any public school accept their mandates?
It goes to their complete and utter disregard for public schools that they don’t even contemplate that they are now treating the sets of schools differently, with the disfavored public schools stuck with their mandates and the favored private schools free to do just about anything they please, and both sets of schools publicly funded.
All the sticks go to public schools and all the carrots go to private schools. Who designs a system like this? It’s ludicrous. It’s a terrible deal for public schools, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, given ed reform’s track record with producing absolutely no benefit to any public school or public school student, anywhere.
They’re dismantling the public system with absolutely no thought or discussion of how their privatized systems will work as to public schools. They simply don’t care.
The same people who are insisting that every public school student must take standardized tests this year spend the rest of their work day lobbying to give everyone a voucher and send them off the purchase 4200 worth of educational products and services.
Weren’t we just told standardization and measurement was vital for equity?
Unless that conflicts with the ideological privatization program they’re running at the same time, then “choice” trumps and they throw their whole theory of policing schools in the trash, but ONLY as to the voucher programs? What?
It’s total hypocrisy, but, as you have said, they don’t care. The first fallacy is that testing is not equity. Dr. Cardona apparently believes it is. Then, his next logical move should be to mandate testing in charter and voucher schools. We’re being forced to pay for them with public funds, why not demand the same level of faux accountability from them? After all, shouldn’t we be sharing ‘equity,’ if we are already sharing money?
nicely said
BTW, Dr. Cardona believes we need a test to determine how and where federal dollars should be spent. That is not the only way states are using testing. The high stakes attached to them in many states include firing teachers, holding back students and closing neighborhood public schools. Is Dr. Cardona so naive that he fails to see the consequences of standardized testing? Also, data mongers monetize and sell the results.
The feds started their testing due to Title 1 money distribution. Only grades 3 and 8 took the tests. ELLs were given services in any grade on the basis of an approved ESL test only. My service as a teacher predates ESL and bilingual education certifications so I know the ever increasing trajectory of standardized testing particularly with regard to second language learners. Standardized testing existed, but it did not dominate curricula as closing schools was not the goal. Now standardized testing dominates the public school landscape because the charter lobby uses testing to justify closing schools. Once students enter charter schools, testing is no longer a priority. Why has the federal government spent so much money on charter expansion with little or no accountability? The process is a scam that Dr. Cardona fails to grasp, or he quietly accepts while he hides behind a false notion of equity.
Of course they care ! There is a synergy of ideas on the billionaire funded right whose goals are to destroy any ability to tax !! or regulate. And the religious right who want as much state funding as they can get from financial support for religious schools, to religious space in public buildings ,including schools . But don’t want the regulation that that funding brings from racial integration to curriculum standards . The NLRA being a tremendous over reach of Government in their view , followed by Brown. Brown birthed the Libertarian right as a movement. If the Government could force a State to integrate schools ,what could be the limit of what comes next in the private sector . Thus George Mason University is birthed and the intellectual backing for their revolting philosophy is nurtured ( Nancy MacLean).
An integrated Public School represents everything they loath, integration, secularism ,regulation, unions… That there are “Liberals” from billionaires to politicians ,that seemingly align with them, requires you to follow the money and self interest of those individuals.
“A Texas state lawmaker introduced a bill to the state House aiming to ban critical race theory in the state’s K-12 public schools.
On Monday, Republican state Rep. James White introduced HB 4093, an education bill looking to end the teaching of critical race theory in public schools throughout the Lone Star State.”
Can they teach critical race theory in the private schools these same people are lobbying to fund? What about “:the Amazon marketplace of educational contractors” they’re cooking up? Ban applies to that too, or no?
So public schools will be the only schools that are subject to the ed reform review/criticism/mandates process? Boy, I can tell people who oppose public schools are designing these new systems, because they are ridiculously biased against our schools and students.
Charter and voucher schools seek to use pubic money for almost anything that can loosely be called “education.” They get total freedom and zero accountability. Public schools get high stakes, punitive testing that bogs the schools and teachers down and narrows curricula. Deformers are putting public schools in a regulatory straight jacket to frustrate students and parents so that so-called choice seems like the best option. If testing is so valuable, why is there no test in the charter schools so students can be “freed” from their failing charter school? Students in New Orleans remain in poor performing charter schools without intervention or school closure because once the tax dollars go into private pockets, there is no incentive to take them out. The scam is complete!
Let’s talk about the full barrel of monkeys here. Vouchers are “freedom”. Students are going to be free to wander the neighborhoods and towns at any time of the day that we used to believe that said student would be “in school”. Seat time is such an old idea, right? Parent purchases education products, uses them on their child (or not) and voila, done for the day. I’m literally scared for our kids.
“Markets and choice” are part of the calculus. State religious conferences are a second influencer. Public education refuses to practice gender discrimination thereby threatening male religious hierarchy and doctrine.
The public policy arm of religious leaders i.e. their state conferences joined with the Koch’s AFP to sponsor “school choice” rallies in state capitols. Religion’s overt role in public policy is, shamefully, a taboo discussion in the U.S. State legislators have introduced conversion therapy legislation against LBGTQ across the land but, to read the media descriptions e.g. Vice, church leadership doesn’t exist in the ant-gay public square,
despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Americans’ lack of religious freedom is evident in a comparison of Britain and the U.S. Oaths of truthfulness rely on hands on the Bible in the U.S. In England, a person can choose a secular oath.