Chris Lubienski has done comparative studies of public and private schools for years. In this latest study, he notes the paradox that choice schools tend to become standardized over time, betraying the claim that they would meet the differing needs and interests of students.
DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 439 519 EA 030 327
AUTHOR Lubienski, Chris
TITLE Diversification and Duplication in Charter Schools
PUBTYPE EDRS PRICE
Ontario,Canada,April14-18,19). InformationAnalyses(070) Speches/MetingPapers(150)
DESCRIPTORS
MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. *CharterSchols;Diversity(Institutional);Educational
IDENTIFIERS
ABSTRACT
Change; *Educational Economics; Elementary Secondary Education;ForeignCountries;FreEnterpriseSystem; Privatization;School Choice Grant Maintained Schols (GreatBritain);*MarketSystems Aproach
Grant-MaintainedSchols:AnExplorationinthePolitical
EconomyofScholChoice. PUBDATE 19-04-0
NOTE
47p.;Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (Toronto.)
This paper examines the political economy of charter schools to understand the tendencies toward standardization and emulation that these schools exhibit. It draws on the developed model of grant-maintained schools in the United Kingdom as an example of the market model’s evolution in mass education. It analyzes the promise of such approaches to explore reformers’ underlying assumptions and thus offers a window into perspectives that have driven these prolific reforms. The paper contrasts the emerging evidence with the public promises of reformers and contrasts these with the disappointing lack of diversification of options for education consumers. It states that widespread and controversial reforms in education across the globe entailed the introduction of market mechanisms of consumer choice and competition among providers in mass education. The text explores the promise of choice plans and charter schools, the effects of competition, and the reaction to uniformity. It concludes that there is a standardizing tendency inherent in markets that both accompanies and counteracts the potential for diversification that competitive markets can generate. The paper claims that market-oriented reformers generally ignore the constraining properties of competitive markets in their discussion of the potential effects of competition in education. (Containsaproximately25references.)(RJM)
Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The main goal of capitalism and competition is to produce profit while the main goal of public education is prepare young people to be educated, informed citizens. The goals are not the same. When education is considered a commodity, emphasis is on reducing overhead to create more profit. Standardization takes priority over innovation. As we have seen with privatized prisons and youth facilities, the emphasis is on performing a service with great efficiency to reduce costs in order to produce more profit for the parent company. Standardization is a inevitability in a for profit system of education. Hiring teaching temps with little training and expanding the use of technology serve to increase standardization and reduce costs. A common practice in many charter schools is to eliminate students that are problematic and expensive to educate to reduce the overhead of instruction. These are all cost cutting measures.
Betsy DeVos accused public schools of a “factory model of education.” This billionaire ideologue has no clue about how public schools operate. Privatized schools are more likely to be standardized with cruel and demeaning consequences for those whose behavior is less than “standard.” Charter schools are more likely to be like a factory than most public schools.
While most public schools have a curriculum with grade level and age appropriate content, many public school teachers are well trained and have readily available content and strategies to diversify instruction. The primary emphasis is on the student, not the corporation. Public schools produce no profit. They are a public responsibility. Privatization generally results in the public paying more for a worse service. Abraham Lincoln once said, “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.” Public education is not a commodity. It is a common good that provides access and opportunity for all, and they are an asset to the communities they serve. The American people need to defend their pubic community schools against the billionaire plan to monetize our schools.
I love reading your comments, retired teacher. Your simple explanations are so logical and beautifully presented. I hope you write these kinds of letters to President Biden, the First Lady and our Education Secretary, who have abandoned all us teachers.
Good news from the Bezos’ billions of philanthropy. Bezos’ ex-wife donated $2 bn. to 286 organizations. The list of grantees does not include the usual ed. villianthropies of the Walton heirs and Bill Gates. One grantee that is suspect is the Urban Institute. Since John Arnold began financing its pension papers, right wing goals come to mind.
We can see from McKenzie Scott’s donations, she is far better person than her EX. She donated $2.7 billion to a lot of worthy causes including a big donation to HBCs.https://apnews.com/article/mackenzie-scott-donating-billions-8e06be7452b8c70f0d9802a6c10ca6a0
Agree. Bill Gates gave some to HBCU’s with the usual strings attached- control of curriculum and delivery.
“A Chicago-based startup builds worker-only app for organizing.”
With luck, we can watch labor make predatory capitalists like Walton heirs, Bill Gates and Charles Koch stumble.
I just don’t think the whole ed reform argument makes sense, in the real world of public schools.
We don’t need 15 boutique charters to replace 3 comprehensive public schools. Schools differentiate within the school. That’s what the public high school students in the article about the public system in Ohio are saying- their school system offers lots of different options and “tracks” and their system can do that because they have economies of scale and they know their population and what the system can support.
Public school parents in Ohio all understand this- it is one of the reasons some people PREFER larger school systems- because of the options offered.
If we charterize and voucherize I think we’ll end up with a disjointed mess of smaller schools that are all under-funded and under-enrolled.
Why would you replicate programs and classes across 11 contractors? You can have a STEM program in a strong public high school along with an arts program. It’s lunacy to say you need a different school for each “major”, or that you need a special new high school for trades or vocational training. Our public high school has been serving students on both tracks for 100 years, and they do it without replicating an entire new management layer at each school.
It’s like none of these people have been inside a public high school in the last 50 years. There are WAY more options than I was offered when I was in high school.
If we consider a school budget as a pie, we can see that more is really less. If we keep dividing the pie into smaller and smaller pieces we will see there is nothing left but crumbs for all. We do not need more schools that are less effective. Public schools are far more efficient because they consolidate and deploy resources while they serve all students.
Coke or Pepsi. They are standardized products. The goal of a business is market share. Ultimately, without proper regulation, all markets reduce themselves to duopolies. Standardization makes consolidation of market share possible. Quality is sacrificed to streamline profitability, and the result is Coke or Pepsi.
Duopolies
Bezos or Waltons?
Bills or Steves?
James’ or Daltons?
Criminal thieves
The James and Daltons were outlaw gangs of the old west who specializes in robbing the public. Not incidentally, they are known to have hung out together at times.
Market Mediocrity
Mediocre’s where it’s at
Quality will kill the cat
Markets move to standardize
Just one product, just one size
Any car, so long as black
Any software, just a hack
Any phone that breaks when dropped
Any thing that can be topped
Any stuff that makes a buck
Even if the products suck
Quality is what it kills
Mediocre pays the Bills
Crapitalism
Haste makes waste
But also buck
Come and taste
The awful stuff
Coke or Pepsi?
Piss or crap?
Crapitalistic
This or that