Grant Frost writes here about the plans of the new Conservative premier of Alberta to fix the schools by introducing charters and market competition. Grant attended the last NPE conference in Indianapolis. He makes clear here what has been muddy in the U.S. Privatization of public schools is a conservative goal.
Frost writes:
There is a very famous anecdote about McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and his take on business. According to legend, after speaking with an MBA class at the University of Texas in 1974, Kroc accepted an invitation to join some of the students for few few beers. During that rather laid-back social event, Kroc asked the MBA students, “What business am I in?” — to which all the students replied, quite obviously: “The hamburger business.” Kroc paused (presumably for dramatic effect) and told them they were wrong. He was not in the hamburger business. He was in the real-estate business.
Every McDonald’s restaurant that I have ever seen sits on a prime piece of real estate in whichever town it’s implanted itself. By some accounts, McDonald’s is the largest owner of real estate in the world — most of it, of course, purchased using the proceeds from the sales of the aforementioned hamburgers. But, in the end, the burgers are just the means to the end.
Now, take that same business model and apply it to local public schools. Once Kenney allows charter school operators to own property, the same premise will come into play.
Charter schools, it should be remembered, are set up to operate outside the public system. They are offered up as alternatives to traditional schools, usually after a fairly long and substantive campaign has been undertaken to convince the general population that traditional schools are failing….
The beauty in this for the edu-preneurs is that once the public buys in, parents will line up around the block to get their kids into the charter school, even in the face of evidence that the public system is actually doing well. After all, parents want what is best for their kids, and using another business strategy called FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) charter school proponents find it relatively easy to exploit parental unease.
And, of course, every single student comes to the door of the new charter school with a backpack full of taxpayer dollars in the form of per-student funding, a percentage of which can now be used by the charter school backers to buy a piece of what is undoubtedly prime real estate.
So, among all the rhetoric coming from Kenney about pipelines, the environment and student GSAs, this is one little nugget that — should it be acted upon — will open up the Canadian education system in ways that we could never have imagined possible a generation ago. Canadian schools will be open for business, with the ground they sit upon being the ultimate prize.
Welcome, Alberta, to the era of McEducation. It probably will not be long before the rest of us follow your lead.
Diane Ravitch's blog 