Nora de la Cour is a high school teacher and writer. This article about the sham of for-profit remote instruction appeared in Jacobin. Study after study has demonstrated the poor results of virtual instruction, but the research does not deter the greedy entrepreneurs who see the profit in virtual charter schools. You may recall the recent press release from the National Alliance for Charter Schools about how charter schools increased enrollment by 250,000 during the pandemic; what the press release didn’t admit was that the “increase” was due entirely to growth in virtual charter enrollments, which may turn out to be a temporary response to the pandemic.
De la Cour sees the push for for-profit remote learning as another front in the privatization movement.
She begins:
In spring of 2020, we saw signs that billionaires and neoliberal politicians were looking to use the COVID-19 lockdown to finally eliminate one of the last remaining venues where Americans convene in the practice of democratic self-governance: the brick-and-mortar schoolhouse.
Plutocrat-funded techno-optimists giddily suggested we use the temporary requirement of virtual learning to test-drive modelsthat give families more “flexibility” and “freedom.” Then-governor Andrew Cuomo formed a partnership between New York state and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to explore a post-pandemic future without “all these physical classrooms.” Betsy DeVos announced $180 million in grants for states to “rethink” K–12 learning, and her cohort of privatization pushers began licking their chops.
Advocates of public education were rightly horrified, recognizing that this would amount to a further hollowing out of one of our last remaining public goods. Fortunately, a combination of factors turned the discourse emphatically back in favor of preserving in-person K–12 learning as the American standard — for now.
The nearly universal problems with remote instruction last year made it politically impossible for the privatization crew to continue arguing that e-learning is the glittery new frontier of educational progress. In fact, survey data shows that a majority of parents disapprove of any kind of change to traditional schooling. This is despite a relentless onslaught of rhetorical attacks on public schools — from the bipartisan vilification of teachers’ unions to right-wing attempts to use mask mandates and critical race theory to breed ill will among parents. The term “school choice” has apparently become so distasteful that school choice conservatives are looking to rebrand their body blows to public education as a “school freedom” and “parents’ rights” movement. They’re winning legislative battles in diverse states, but they’re losing the war for public opinion.
It’s widely accepted that in-person schools meet critical developmental needs and are necessary for most students. Nevertheless, the pandemic has swiftly accelerated the expansion of digital instruction. Public education advocates are now at a crossroads. We can either proactively define the relationship between remote and in-person schooling, or we can watch from the sidelines as private companies claim a monopoly over distance learning and use it to undermine public education.
Open the link and read the whole article.
If the pandemic taught us anything about education, it is that virtual learning is tedious drudgery that does not result in better learning. Cyber learning is inappropriate for most poor and young students. There are real health concerns about exposing developing eyes, brains and mental health to too much screen time. We know profiteers won’t stop expanding cyber learning because there is so much money behind it. The Biden infrastructure bill, if passed, includes money to promote “digital equity.” We can read between the lines and understand that a hidden agenda may be to disconnect education from the brick and mortar schoolhouse.https://www.govtech.com/network/the-biden-infrastructure-plan-digital-equity-wishlist
The whole ed reform echo chamber are still relentlessly promoting and marketing online learning. They haven’t missed a beat. Faced with mountains of evidence that it’s a poor substitute for schools, they just double down and promote it harder.
Salespeople for the ed tech sector. Probably has something to do with the private entities and foundations who pay those generous ed reform salaries. It’s not an accident that Gates and Zuckerberg fund the hundreds of ed reform groups and thousands of full time ed reform promoters.
“It’s time for a new K–12 reform agenda
Paul Hill
Ashley Jochim”
Identical to the old ed reform agenda, but now with the word “pandemic” in it.
The same old wine in an endless series of new bottles. For the last twenty years.
More pure charter and voucher cheerleading from the ed reform echo chamber:
“Something like that description may also apply to Arizona’s success in spurring academic growth in the pre-pandemic period. Arizona has the largest charter-school sector in the country, serving about 22 percent of the Grand Canyon State’s public-school students. Add to that private-school choice programs in the form of scholarship tax credits and Education Savings Accounts, and the result is that the supply of new schools has been relatively unconstrained. This suited Arizona’s needs when choice programs first passed in 1994; at the time Arizona was a state rapidly growing in population and the existing schools and students were attaining a low-to-average level of academic performance.”
I don’t mind that they don’t do any work other than really relentless promotion and marketing of charters and vouchers- I do think they have a duty to admit they don’t do any work for public schools, though.
Flood the market with ed reform’s preferred (privatized or private schools) and, miraculously, success!
This one has a “progressive” gloss but they’re all identical. Jeb Bush could have written this, or Betsy DeVos, or Arne Duncan. It’s all one marketing campaign.
How did it happen that US education policy became completely captured by this small group of charter/voucher proponents? Why is it all identical? Why isn’t there any diversity of opinion and no advocacy or support for public schools? Public schools and public school students are not permitted to have advocates? Only charter/voucher promoters get a place in ed reform? Can we even have a public debate on their plans to privatize the whole sector, or is this just a done deal?
Echo. Chamber. And they utterly dominate US education policy- there are no dissenters.
https://www.educationnext.org/state-that-created-the-most-new-schools-is-also-the-one-where-students-learned-more-than-anywhere-else-arizona/
West Virginia learns what all the states who blindly followed the ed reform agenda already know- that “nonprofit” doesn’t mean anything in charter schools and that there will be no local involvement or management at all:
“A for-profit education company is seeking to open a charter school in the shadow of one of West Virginia’s three 2021 National Blue Ribbon Schools and draw students from a county that had the state’s second-highest math and English standardized test scores last school year.
Nonprofit groups, or groups seeking nonprofit status, are the only organizations allowed by West Virginia’s charter law to apply to open charters. Those nonprofits are allowed to hire for-profit companies to run the schools day to day.
In the case of Nitro Preparatory Academy, the for-profit ACCEL Schools, part of private international company Pansophic Learning, hired a consultant to recruit board members to oversee the school.”
The for-profit operator hand picks the charter board. That’s the ed reform “governance” scheme. It’s an recipe for corruption. I give it 5 years before West Virginia has the same massive charter scandals as Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.
Remember- the ed reform echo chamber drafts these charter laws. This is the “governance” they design, with no oversight and no transparency. This is what they prefer.
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/education/huntington-residents-are-trying-to-start-a-charter-school-in-nitro-7-min-from-1/article_1c5c0252-8fb4-5f12-80ef-e354c15510a3.html
At a State of Oregon School Board meeting before the pandemic, students testified that their grades and interest in school dropped with online learning. The board’s response? Increase online learning.
more computers, fewer teachers to pay?
Does no one understand that humans need to interact with other human beings in real 3-
D time? What does it take to get the powers that be to listen? We are endangering the health of our democratic society with libertarian nonsense that rejects the value of social interaction that addresses the needs of the individual through a communal/public framework. Obviously, those who are pushing a digital future in education have a different agenda.
At least they could be honest and stop all “reform” and “choice” rhetoric. The goal is to privatize education and reduce its cost in the process. The dismantling of public education will continue unless parents or those that refuse to accept the unacceptable cause a ruckus and take a stand.
Remote learning. Gerund phrase. A computerized environment for instruction at a distance in which there is a remote chance that any learning is taking place.
Pearsonalized intructioney, next generationey, remote learney sounding -ing ism.