I’m posting again—this time with the link!
This interview with education journalist Jennifer Berkshire is worth reading. Good questions, sharp answers.
Shockingly, Berkshire predicts that several states will “phase out” public schools, presumably to be replaced by a smorgasbord of choices: charters, vouchers, online schooling, homeschooling, and more.
What do you think?
Toby Price, an assistant principal of an elementary school in the Hinds County School District in Mississippi, was fired because he read a book to second graders on Zoom called I Need a New Butt! The school board did not approve. Nor did the superintendent.
The school was participating in “Read Across America” day to honor Dr. Seuss’s birthday and to encourage children to love reading. Mr. Price thought the children would find the book hilarious, and they did. But they also got a lesson in the power and danger of books when Mr. Price was fired a few days later. He’s trying to get his job back and has a GoFundMe to support his family and pay a lawyer.
When I first read this story, I sent it to Carol Burris, my friend and executive director of the Network for Public Education. She immediately responded that she must be a criminal grandma because she’s shared that same book with her grandchildren many times, and they love it.
She drafted a confession:
True confession. I am a terrible grandma to my five grandkids. I confess. I bought little Phinney I Need a New Butt! I did not even wait for second grade—I bought it for him when he was two. We would laugh all the way through and he would beg me to read it… again and again and again.
But I did not stop there. I bought a copy for my other two grandkids, Merek and Reeve, then four and two. That’s me, a serial corrupter of young children’s minds.
And if there were a grandma license in the State of Mississippi, then mine would surely be snatched away. I am referring, of course to the tragic ridiculousness of the firing of an assistant principal in Mississippi for reading I Need a New Butt! to second-graders over Zoom.
Anyone who has ever spent any time with young kids knows that silliness is a magnet that draws kids into stories. I devoured Dr. Seuss, limericks, and rhymes as a child. My daughters loved the hilarity of Where the Sidewalk Ends with its rhymes about a child poet in a lion’s belly, baby brothers that ran away, and of course that sack with its mysterious contents (perhaps an extra butt is inside?) Stories with rich rhymes and rhythms build literacy. And maybe a sense of humor—something the world sorely needs.
I worked in schools long enough to figure out the back story on this one. Some self-righteous fool, who likely never liked the man, heard the story and called their friend on the school board. And then a spineless administrator complied, rather than standing up for a man whose life work was spent among children.
It’s a chilling tale of power and fear and extremism. And worst of all, the children of Gary Road Elementary lost someone who understands them, only to be left with school leaders whose butts may be tight and intact, but most certainly have cracks in their hearts and heads.
So, here’s the irony: I Need a New Butt! is now #1 bestseller on Amazon’s list of beginning readers for children.
The word should go out to every school board and legislature in the nation: whenever you ban a book, its sales will soar! Authors will wear your ban as a badge of honor. They may even ask you to ban their books so they too will benefit. Don’t do it!
As we all know, the President of Ukraine was a popular comedian before he ran for office and won election. He ran on the ticket of the “Servant of the People” party, which was the name of his television program.
This clip was made in 2014 or 2015. It was posted by author Cathy Young, who wrote the subtitles.
Tina Bojanowski is a teacher who ran for the Kentucky legislature after the teachers’ strike and won. She is the only active teacher serving in the legislature.
Right now, the legislature is debating whether to fund new charter schools. Tina wrote the following opinion piece. It does make you wonder when the Republican Party turned against local control, which they once championed.
I can testify to the pride that Kentucky communities feel in their public schools. A few years ago, I spoke to the Kentucky School Boards Association and, while waiting to go on, I wandered around the public space outside the meeting room. In the hall outside, the walls were covered with posters made by the children in each school district. Each one reflected their love of community and schools.
Tina wrote in the Lexington Herald Leader:
Kentucky families are proud of our public schools, and we should be. Our caring public schools staffed with dedicated professional educators are also wonderful reflections of our communities, even when there are challenging differences in ideas about the details of public education.
I would hate to lose that community identity, our local control of public schools, and the ability to have a say in how our taxpayer dollars are spent on educating our children. All of those blessings would be threatened if HB 9, pending in the legislature, is passed.
We have never funded charter schools because we have never wanted to take funding from our public schools. However, HB 9 would do just that. With every child who goes to a charter, all federal, state, and, yes, local tax dollars would go with him. And with HB 9, our school districts would even have to pay all the transportation costs.
Schools would immediately feel the pain as they transferred money out of their budget with little to no, if any, savings at all. That is because stranded costs are left behind. Lights must go on. Roofs must be repaired. Administration, school nurses, bus drivers, and other staff must still be paid. Unless large numbers of students leave, you cannot even reduce staff by one teacher. But thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars would leave the school. That means either local taxes must go up or children get less as programs are cut.
Right now, only our school districts and our mayors decide where a charter school pops up. If this bill is passed, political appointees, universities, and even nonprofits that have nothing to do with education at all will be the deciders. And they will all rush to authorize charters to cash in on the 3% cut of ALL tax dollars that will go to the charter school.
It doesn’t matter where you live in Kentucky, I am sure we all agree that we should be empowered to make our own decisions about our public schools and whether we want charter schools. Our strong sense of local control integrates parents into the education process that has created a successful and thriving recipe Kentucky students benefit from each year.
But you will never have local control over a charter school. You will never be able to vote for a charter school board member. That is because they will be appointed. Even though they will spend your hard-earned tax dollars, they can have unlimited terms, never being voted in or removed from office by the taxpayers who fund their schools. And all you need to do is to look to neighboring Ohio to see how that works out. Nearly half of their charter schools are run by for-profits, often with out-of-state corporate offices that run the schools for a nonprofit board that is merely a facade. Given the financial generosity and loose regulations of HB 9, they will rush into Kentucky. We will not have a few charter schools. We will have a tsunami of charter schools. It’s clear that HB 9 was written by the charter lobby headquartered in the DC beltway.
I ask everyone to join me in opposition to this naked financial and political power grab that robs local communities of political power, local students of education-centered schools, and taxpayers of funding for our communities’ common schools. Let’s work together to improve our public schools and say “no” to HB 9. Tina Bojanowski serves District 32 of the KY House of Representatives. She is also a teacher for JCPS and is the only active K-12 teacher in the General Assembly.
Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article259276709.html#storylink=cpy
By now, we have observed that the Koch-Walton-DeVos oligarchs take every opportunity to undermine public confidence in public schools. Wherever there is an organized attack on public schools and their teachers, it’s a safe bet that there’s dark money from libertarian billionaires.
John Merrow wrote recently about the new “parents rights” groups that have led the fight against public schools. His post was condensed by the blog of the Network for Public Education. Read the full post here on John Merrow’s blog..
Opportunistic politicians are also attempting to limit classroom discussion of other controversial topics. In late February Florida’s House of Representatives passed a bill to ban “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in the state’s primary schools. Governor DeSantis has indicated that he will sign the bill if the Senate passes it. [The legislature passed the bill and DeSantis will sign it.]
Of course, the GOP maintains that it’s doing this for parents “Speaking to legislators on the House floor, Rep. Joe Harding, the Republican who introduced the bill, said the measure is about “empowering parents” and improving the quality of life for the state’s children.” Florida isn’t alone. According to the highly regarded publication Chalkbeat, at least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism.
As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote recently, “Defenders of this push for censorship say they are simply working to protect the nation’s children from prejudice, psychological distress and inappropriate material. ‘To say there were slaves is one thing, but to talk in detail about how slaves were treated, and with photos, is another,’ said Tina Descovich, a leader of (a Florida chapter of) Moms for Liberty, a conservative group that seeks to enshrine ‘parental rights’ into law.”
Ms. Descovich, who lost her seat on a local school board in 2020, is a parent, but many of the adults who have been disrupting local school board meetings not only do not have children enrolled in those schools; they are classic outside agitators, perhaps even from neighboring states.
Simply reviewing curricula and banning discussion aren’t enough for some. Legislators in Florida, Iowa, and Mississippi want cameras installed in classrooms so parents can watch what’s going on. “The Iowa bill, H.F. 2177, would require that cameras be placed in every public school classroom in the state, except for physical education and special education classes. The cameras would feed to livestreams that could be viewed on the internet by parents, guardians and others.” Educators who fail to keep the cameras operational would lose 5% of their salary, per infraction. The bill died in Committee, but its supporters haven’t given up.
The pandemic has created opportunities for opponents of public education. Twenty-two states created or enlarged school voucher programs in 2021, and more are in the offing. “School voucher proponents in statehouses across the country have spent much of the past year working to pass legislation that transfers critical public school funding to the private sector. Framing these debates around education “reform” and the inauthentic culture wars surrounding public schools, voucher proponents have been steadily working to undermine public education on the state level.” That’s from the publication of the National Education Association, which explains the loaded language.
But the NEA numbers are correct, as others have reported. ”Nearly half of all state legislatures last year increased funding for school choice programs in their state budgets or passed laws to expand or create new Education Savings Accounts or scholarship programs. They also notably expanded eligibility requirements to include home-schooling, charter schools and private schools. Four states created entirely new programs; three created new and expanded programs, and Ohio created the most improved programs of them all, according to the analysis. The majority, 14, either expanded or improved their existing school choice programs.”
While this isn’t the time or place to debate vouchers, let’s stipulate that money dedicated to vouchers would otherwise have gone to public schools.
COVID and the ensuing closure of most public schools frustrated many parents, some of whom felt that teachers cared more about their own health than their students’ learning. Teacher unions, a favorite whipping boy of the right, may have hurt their own cause by defending members who did not want to risk contracting COVID–but defending their members is what unions are supposed to do.
But what’s happening now has very little to do with education and far more to do with politics. Republicans feel that being ‘pro-parent’ is a winning position, even though barely 20% of households have school age children. I don’t think most Republican politicians really care whether parents dig deeply into curriculum. What they hope is that the other 80%–those without children–will be outraged at the idea of meddling teachers indoctrinating America’s children. Their goal is for the other 80% to go to the polls and vote Republican.
The following article describes a victory for parents and communities, which blocked a privatization plan to close 23 schools. It appeared on “Parent Voices for Public Schools,” which is sponsored by the Network for Public Education.
What’s the best way to improve public education? That question, hotly contested in communities across the country, has prompted an intense debate in Charleston, SC, a thriving city that is experiencing a boom in growth and economic development and has in many ways become a symbol of the New South. But too often missing from these discussions are the voices or perspectives from individuals from within the actual communities who will be directly impacted or affected by policies to improve their neighborhood public schools. We rarely hear from the parents who rely on public schools to educate their children and even the actual young people themselves, particularly those old enough to articulate and discern what they would like to experience in terms of a quality public school education. While the community organizations putting forth proposals to improve or reform schools in the South Carolina Lowcountry may be well-intentioned, excluding parent and student voices is a critical omission.
The most recent example is the Coastal Community Foundation (CCF) and its Reimagine Schools Proposal. South Carolina legislators recently expanded the state’s “Schools of Innovation” law, which authorizes the takeover of individual schools by an unidentified “Innovation Management Organization” or IMO. CCF’s Reimagine Schools plan calls for these IMOs to manage some 23 struggling public schools in Charleston, all serving students of color from surrounding communities.
In Charleston, the Coastal Community Foundation looms large, managing nearly $300 million in assets. But what it doesn’t have is any proven track record working in PK-12 education, a major concern of local area groups engaged in public education advocacy, grassroots roots leadership, and other critical voices from within the community.
Just how CCF’s Reimagine Schools plan would address the critical issue of community involvement is also unclear. The proposal calls for the establishment of District Innovation Commissions consisting of consolidated and constituent school board members and as many as ten members from the community-at-large consisting of faith and business leaders and other stakeholders. But what entity will determine who these individuals will be? This is a critical question at a time when local area groups and grassroots organizers have been pushing for more community voice regarding the direction of Charleston’s public schools. These advocates are concerned that CCF and its allies are moving forward with a vision that is open to privatization and financial profits for vendors without receiving input from the community, including the parents who rely on the twenty-three schools that are to be ‘reimagined.’
Community voice isn’t just an abstraction. Parents, teachers, faith leaders, and other local stakeholders are at ground zero when it comes to truly understanding the educational needs of children in their communities and the challenges they face when it comes to receiving a quality education. Most importantly, they are not in the game to profit financially through contractual relationships with various outside vendors.
CCF’s Reimagine Schools proposal calls on the Charleston County School District’s consolidated school board to spend $32 million to support privatization schemes. Voices from within the community are calling for these funds to be invested directly into the district to support greater wraparound services for students and their parents, provide two teachers in every classroom and provide additional psychological services given the shortage nationally of qualified clinical psychologists working in PK-12 education. These are common-sense solutions that meet the needs of schools within the local community that elected leaders would be wise to consider.
Since CCF introduced Reimagine Schools late last year, pushback from community groups and public school advocates has been fierce. Recently the school board announced that the proposal is being tabled indefinitely, a response to pressure from grassroots organizers. While experience teaches us that we must remain vigilant, this was a huge victory for believers in public education.
Dr. Kendall Deas is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Race, Freedom, and Democratic Citizenship with the African American Studies Program and Institute for African American Research at the University of South Carolina. He is also the Director of the Quality Education Project, a community-based research organization in South Carolina committed to public education advocacy.
Steven Singer is an experienced English Language Arts teacher in Pennsylvania. In this post, he shows how he created a lesson about Ukraine and linked it to Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.”
He writes:
How does one teach about war?
With pictures or words?
With speeches or documentation?
With prayers or curses?
With laughter or tears?
I began my class like I always do – with a question.
“Has anyone heard about what’s happening in Ukraine?” I asked.
A few hands, but they had only heard the words. They didn’t know what was happening.
So I showed my 8th graders a short video that summarized events so far. I drew a map of Europe and Asia on the board. I outlined Ukraine, Russia and the European union. I explained about the Soviet Union and its collapse. I explained about NATO and the struggle for power and prestige.
When I was done, there was a moment of silence. They were all staring up at me. It was one of those rare moments of stillness, a pregnant pause before the questions started raining down.
A patter at first, then a storm.
They asked about what they were hearing at home. They searched for corroboration, explanation and/or other viewpoints.
One child asked if this was NATO’s fault. If it was President Biden’s doing.
I
And yet another asked about nuclear proliferation and whether this war meant the end of the world.
I couldn’t answer all of their questions, though I tried. When there was something I couldn’t say or didn’t know, I pointed them in a direction where they might find some answers.
But it led to some interesting discussion.
Then I asked them if they had talked about any of this in their other classes – perhaps in social studies. They all said no, that a few teachers had promised to get to it after finishing the 13 colonies or another piece of mandated curriculum.
I was surprised but not shocked. I know the tyranny of the curriculum.
I was only able to talk about this, myself, because of the scope and sequence of Language Arts. You see, it was poetry time and I was about to introduce my students to Alfred Lord Tennyson and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Continue reading to learn about the lesson.
Chalkbeat reports that Teach for America will field the smallest number of recruits in 15 years.
The organization expects to place just under 2,000 teachers in schools across the country this coming fall. That’s just two-thirds of the number of first-year teachers TFA placed in schools in fall 2019, and just one-third of the number it sent into the field at its height in 2013.
The latest drops are a continuation of a years-long trend. Still, it’s a striking decline for an organization that’s played a prominent role in American debates about how to improve education and how to staff schools that often struggle to attract and retain teachers….
Alongside declines in enrollment at traditional teacher prep programs and other nontraditional programs, it’s also more evidence that interest in becoming an educator in the U.S. has fallen.
TFA has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government and big philanthropies. Its founder Wendy Kopp used to say that better teachers would end poverty. It wasn’t true then and its not true now, nor is it accurate to say that TFA supplied “better” teachers than career educators.
Eric Blanc wrote a book about the teachers’ strikes titled Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics.
He is in Minneapolis now covering the teachers’ strike that started last Tuesday.
He writes in The Nation:
Thousands of educators are on strike in Minneapolis, two years into a pandemic that has pushed public education to a breaking point across the country. With the future of education in unprecedented limbo, the stakes are high—and not just in the Twin Cities.
Public schools were in crisis well before Covid-19. Especially in predominantly non-white, working-class school districts like Minneapolis, decades of underfunding, privatization, high-stakes testing, and low educator pay made it increasingly difficult for teachers and support staff to provide the education their students deserve.
In the Twin Cities and beyond, the past two years have reversed Red for Ed’s political momentum and exacerbated structural stressors and inequities, resulting in increased educator outflows from the profession and increased familyoutflows from public schools. By late 2021, a quarter of teachers, and almost half of Black teachers, indicated in national surveys that they were considering leaving their jobs. Over the past 18 months, Minneapolis Public Schools have lost over 640 teachers and support professionals.
Schools have lacked basic resources necessary to address students’ mental distress in the face of pandemic conditions, the police murder of George Floyd, and subsequent social unrest. In line with a growing trend of progressive unions to “bargain for the common good,” one of the Minneapolis strike’s major demands is for every school to be provided with a social worker and counselor every day, as well as increased hiring of school psychologists. “As educators, we have been saying ‘What about the kids?’ for decades,” explains Greta Callahan, president of the teachers’ chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. “And right now we’re at a place where we can no longer allow students to pay for the mistakes made by those at the top.”
Shortages of support staff, substitutes, and teachers in Minneapolis and St. Paul have deepened the difficulties of those educators who remain. This is especially the case for educational support professionals (ESPs), half of whom are people of color. “If we’re going to talk about racial justice, we have to talk about how we treat everybody in our system,” explains Shaun Laden, president of the educational support professionals’ chapter of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. “The district doesn’t treat our members of color and our hourly workers with the dignity and respect that they deserve.” Faced with increased work burdens and a less-than-living wage—many ESPs make as low as $24,000 a year—it is not surprising that Sahan Journal found a 22 percent vacancy rate for Minneapolis ESPs, with many choosing instead to work at McDonalds or as FedEx delivery drivers. Unions are demanding that the starting pay for 90 percent of ESPs be bumped up to $35,000.
Of course, teachers are striking for higher pay but much more is involved. Open the link and read on.
Sweden is debating the effects of its program for school privatization, which began under a conservative government in 1992.
The following article, translated from Swedish, was written by Lars Anell. Anell is an economist with a degree from the Stockholm School of Economics. He has worked at the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was head of the development agency SAREC 1980-83, and was on the Prime Minister’s Committee under Olof Palme. In the years 1994–2001, he was responsible for social issues at Volvo. He has also been chairman of FAS, the Research Council for Working Life and Social Sciences, as well as UN Ambassador and EU Ambassador. Lars Anell is currently Chairman of the Board of the Arena Group.”
The article has lessons for the U.S. First, the bold promises of privatization are seldom, if ever, realized. Second, once privatization takes root, its economic and political beneficiaries strongly defend it, regardless of the consequences for students and society.
Lars Anell writes:
The author of the book Barnexperimentet, Per Kornhall, wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter in 2012 under the heading The principle of a good school for everyone no longer applies in Sweden. He had then decided to leave the National Agency for Education but was formally still employed there – and realized that he had probably crossed the line of what an official should say in public. When he entered the coffee room on Monday morning, the employees raised a spontaneous applause. Those who worked with school issues knew that the activities no longer met the school law’s requirements for an equivalent school. But politically, nothing happened. There was no debate at all
There is a short narrative about how this came about. When joint-stock companies were allowed to run tax-financed schools in the early 1990s, they received compensation that corresponded to 85 percent of the municipal cost per student. An inquiry found this too generous and suggested a level of 75 percent. Instead, a Social Democratic government gave the school entrepreneurs more than what they could have dreamt of – 100 percent. This story is not entirely true. Many would probably say that it is misleading. On the other hand, it is obvious that no one thought about the consequences of allowing schools run for profit.
Stage 1
In September 1991, Ingvar Carlsson’s Social Democratic government commissioned the school director in Stockholm, Mr Sven-Åke Johansson, to investigate “certain issues concerning fees at independent schools.” At this time, there were no for-profit schools. The assignment essentially concerned Waldorf schools, Montessori-inspired and confessional schools that were largely financed by fees and parents’ voluntary efforts. In total, less than 1 percent of pupils with compulsory school attendance were in the schools affected.
The investigator emphasized that the basis for assessing student costs was shaky. Questionnaires were “incomplete and forms not properly filled in.” All schools concerned were dependent on extensive voluntary efforts, but “only a small number of schools in the survey have been able to assess this value.”
If you took the actual cost per pupil, it stayed at SEK 28,000 – 40 percent less than the municipal schools´ average cost. After trying to estimate the value of parents´ voluntary contributions, the investigator calculated that the student cost in independent schools was 13 percent lower.
An interesting aspect is that the investigator took a clear political position. The activities at the independent schools were characterized by a lack of money, low salaries and large non-profit efforts. “Now we notice,” writes the lone investigator, “a clear will to change these unfair conditions. The change is justified and positive. “
However, the investigator was bypassed by Carl Bildt´s right-of center government, which took office after the 1991 election. The new Minister of Education, Ms Beatrice Ask, proposed, in bill 1991/92:95, that municipalities should be allowed to reduce the compensation to private for-profit schools by 15 percent.
The investigator nevertheless completed his assignment and pointed out that the municipalities responsibility for the whole system justified a larger deduction. Most independent schools would fully cover their costs with a public subsidy of 75 – 85 percent of the municipal average cost. He also pointed out that the establishment of independent schools inevitably led to increased costs – especially for premises.
The central conclusion in this context is:
“The basic and statutory grant percentage for independent schools must be set so that competition between municipal and independent schools takes place on equal terms. According to my analysis, its lowest limit can then not exceed 75 percent of the municipality’s average cost per pupil.”
But this conclusion must be qualified. The investigator was tasked to design a system that would free non-profit schools from the obligation to charge fees to finance the activities. He also suggested that these schools should continue to be able to charge certain student fees.
Stage 2
The above-mentioned bill 1991/92:95 on Freedom of choice and independent schools is surprisingly short, which is due to the fact that there was no basis whatsoever to refer to. The ongoing inquiry is mentioned in passing but its report was not yet available. The dramatic change in the Swedish school system, unparalleled in the surrounding world, which this bill portended was not preceded by any preparation and was not met by any organized political opposition.
As said, one explanation is that there were no profit-driven schools yet – dreaming was allowed. And Swedish pupils still scored exceptionally well in international competition.
It is quite clear that Ms Ask, wanted to see more alternatives to the municipal school in order to increase the opportunity for students and parents to choose freely. This would also increase parental involvement and municipalities’ sensitivity to citizens’ wishes. Above all, there was a need for new ideas and pedagogical creativity. “It can be about parent cooperatives, focus on special subjects or schools in sparsely populated areas that can get a new chance under new leadership.” Ms Ask said that this would lead to “better incentives for cost-effectiveness” so that we get “a more efficient use of resources within the overall school system.”
She emphasizes commitments that independent schools can avoid (health care, school transport, home language teaching, especially resource-intensive students and the obligation to take care of students who have left an independent school) but still maintains that the student grant may not be reduced by more than 15 percent. But nowhere is it said that a municipality must adapt the grant to the independent school’s lower cost. It is worth adding that neither Mr Johansson’s 75 nor Ms Ask’s 85 percent are based on any reported analysis.
We must continue to keep in mind that this bill was presented when all independent schools were non-profit and still had the right to charge tuition fees. Ms Ask announces that she intends to return to the Riksdag in the matter. Bill 1991/92: 95 is therefore in many ways a signal of what is yet to come.
However, two sentences are worth remembering:
“My aim is to control the activities of independent schools as little as possible. At the same time, however, there are strong reasons to make it clear that, as they receive general grants similar to the public school system, they must not contribute to economic and social segregation “
The Bildt Government´s second bill on freedom of choice in schools (1992/93: 230) is a somewhat more comprehensive document that is based on an internal paper (Ds 1992: 115) and a public report on grants and student fees (SOU 1992: 38).
The paper dealt with opportunities to choose a school, financial conditions for independent upper secondary schools and opportunities to outsource all or part of an education to another principal. The proposal is that “municipalities and county councils may enter into agreements with a joint-stock company, a trading company, an economic association, a non-profit association or a foundation to perform some of the tasks for which the municipalities and county councils are responsible according to the Education Act.” However, the public responsibility for the school system may not be transferred. The municipality must have full control and a municipal employee must “perform some of the principal’s tasks that involve the exercise of authority, e.g. the issuance of grades. ” Swedish Employers´ Association and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities were in favor of outsourcing schools, but most other consultative bodies were negative. The National Audit Office pointed out that the memorandum did not contain any impact assessment or even a discussion of whether there was a need for contracting solutions.
In the above-mentioned public report, reference was made to the Riksdag decision that the minimum contribution to independent schools shall be 85 per cent of the municipality’s student costs. ” This means that “there is a risk that the independent schools will have more favorable conditions for running activities than the municipal schools.” To create equal conditions, the level should be 75 percent. Only a few of many institutions that provided comments (Nacka and Västerås municipalities and the National Association for Waldorf Pedagogy) wanted to keep a minimum contribution corresponding to 85 percent of the municipality’s own costs. Virtually everyone else wanted to reduce it to 75 percent – some municipalities (Haninge, Hudiksvall and Sundsvall) wanted to go even further. Several consultative bodies pointed to the risk that municipal schools will be disadvantaged.
The bill is interesting in several ways. The ideological attitude is that more independent schools is positive in all dimensions – above all, it leads to pedagogical renewal and increased freedom of choice – and problem-free for all concerned. Even increased bureaucracy is welcomed – “the municipal accounting systems have become more sophisticated when the municipalities have been forced to produce different types of costs and average costs for the school system.” The fact that parents and pupils will be forced “to make an active choice of school” is seen as progress. For some unknown reason it is asserted that competition between several principals is expected to give “the municipalities completely new opportunities to achieve coordination and synergy benefits.”
Against this background, it is interesting that the actual proposals are so timid. “I am not prepared to propose a general opportunity to outsource primary schools,” writes Ms Ask. However, it will be possible for the government to grant an application from a municipality to contract out a school to another principal.” As regards upper secondary schools, the area that will primarily be relevant is vocational training related to relevant companies. Education in economics, technology and aesthetic subjects may also be considered if the teaching has a “vocational character.” In other respects, special reasons are required for the government to approve an independent school.
Most surprising is that the principal and her duties cannot be relinquished. The municipality’s control is thus guaranteed by the requirement to appoint a head-master for independent schools. This means that the term grades are set by teachers, while the principal is responsible for the grade documents issued in the municipality’s name.
The consultative bodies’ solid support for lowering the minimum level for the student allowance to 75 per cent is rejected. But the only argument is that the decision of 85 percent was made less than a year ago.
This bill was written when the expansion of independent schools had begun. In just one year, the number of students had doubled. But there are no thoughts at all about what this development could lead to. The language is toned down. In the internal paper there was talk of joint-stock companies. The bill calls the contractors natural and legal persons and the word profit is never mentioned. But there was nothing that presaged the coming of a capitalist school market.
Stage 3
After the 1994 election, responsibility for the country’s education system again fell to a government led by Ingvar Carlsson. The first measure was to give municipalities the opportunity to reduce the student grant to independent schools by a maximum of 25 percent of their own average cost (Bill 1994/95: 157). The Minister of Education, Ms Ylva Johansson, bases this position entirely on the investigation Mr Johansson made three years earlier. Nothing is said about the risk that independent schools will still receive more than the full cost. The municipalities are not forced to stay at the minimum level.
One year later, in bill 1995/96: 200, the minimum level is replaced by the rule that a student in an independent school must receive a grant according to the same principles that apply to the municipality’s own schools based on the school’s commitment and students’ needs. This opens the way for a powerful overcompensation of independent schools.
The bill is based on two investigations. The report Equal education on equal terms is permeated, like all other documents from this time, by the notion that independent schools are a complement that enriches the municipal school system by increasing diversity and pedagogical creativity. Equal conditions for schools with different principals are seen as “a prerequisite for all parents and students to have freedom of choice and not just financially strong groups.”
The report emphasizes the teachers’ competence as a prerequisite for a school to be able to respond to the requirements of the School Act and the goals of the curriculum. No special admission principles should be applied, but the Education Act should not force an independent school to accept a student “if the reception would lead to significant organizational or financial problems.” The municipality’s contribution shall be based on “the school’s commitment and the students’ needs on the same grounds and according to the same principles” that apply to its own compulsory school. A municipality must be able to prevent the establishment of an independent school if it has “significant negative consequences for other students” or if it “can have serious effects on the municipality’s compulsory school activities as a whole.”
The report Independent upper secondary schools (SOU 1995: 113) initially states that independent schools often “received grants that were higher than the amounts prescribed by the government” and emphasized that equal conditions are a prerequisite for equivalent education. It is then determined that “nationally prescribed amounts” shall no longer occur. Municipalities must calculate the student allowance on the basis of the school’s actual costs, based on the school’s commitments and the students’ needs. The calculation shall be made on the same basis and according to the same principles that the municipality applies in terms of costs for students who attend a corresponding program in a municipal school. “
Bill 1995/96: 200 is dominated, like all other texts, by promises of a good and equal education for all students, regardless of where they live, socio-economic conditions and the school’s owner. This will be achieved through competition on equal terms between municipal and independent schools. “Diversity itself is positive and does not stand in opposition to equality and good quality. On the contrary, diversity is usually a prerequisite for development and pedagogical renewal.” Great emphasis is placed on the influence of parents and students over school and teaching, while the role of teachers is given a less prominent place.
Ms Johansson, followed the inquiry’s (SOU 1995:109) advice regarding the size of school fees. The current order was considered to have been too rigid. The proposal was thus that grants should be given “according to the same principles that are applied to the municipality’s own” schools “based on the school’s commitment and the students’ needs.” If the establishment of a school can have significant negative consequences for a municipality’s school system, the National Agency for Education may refuse to pay grants.
A key aspect that was only touched on by a few consultative bodies was that the municipalities have dual roles – they finance and compete with independent schools. Surely there was a risk that a municipality would favour its own schools? I do not see that Ms Johansson answered this question. The only thing said is “that the municipalities develop clear rules for their resource allocation that can be evaluated.”
This bill sets out the basics for calculating school fees, which does not mean that all schools should receive the same amount. According to the public report A common concern (SOU 2020: 46), however, an agreement with the Green Party led to the level of compensation being raised to 100 percent in 1997. This laid the foundation for the sharp overcompensation and competitive advantage for profit-driven schools that still applies.
It is worth mentioning that the Bildt government’s proposal was to outsource teaching. This indicates an agreement between the municipalities and the contractor in which the assignment to be performed is specified. The Social Democrats did not argue against the idea of independent schools but opposed it being done on a contract basis. In reality, the joint-stock companies that established themselves came to enjoy almost total freedom from oversight.
In the rearview mirror:
With the fragile authority of hindsight, it is easy to judge these bills, investigations and memoranda as clueless and vacuous – and full of hopes that proved pious. If you want to find a single insight into possible consequences, you have to look in the rich harvest of comments from consultative bodies – and even there they are thin on the ground. It must therefore be repeated that even in the mid-1990s, only a few percent of the students went to what could still be called independent schools. And most of them applied an alternative pedagogy. There were not yet any school companies with the venture capitalist’s required rate of return and tax domicile in Luxembourg.
It is only in the rearview mirror that we see that it was unfortunate to abandon the model with a recommended minimum level for grants to independent schools. Judging by the consultation responses to the report Grants and student fees (SOU 1992:38), there was solid support for a compensation level of 75 percent. The argument in Bill 1995/96:200 that it means “an overly rigid allocation of resources, without regard to the needs of the students or the commitment of the schools” is not true. It is not a standard rigidly applied but a guaranteed minimum level for the entrepreneur who wants to establish an independent school and takes into account the fact that municipalities have a greater and more costly responsibility. From this floor, municipalities have all the flexibility in the world to adapt the grant to the commitment of independent schools in addition to the minimum requirements.
Another fundamental condition is that the market to be exposed to competition is autonomous in the sense that effects do not spill over into the surrounding society. If we accept that human capital is a nation’s most important asset – a rule of thumb says that it is worth five times more than other physical production resources – then the school market is by far the least autonomous. This is also a reason to nationalize the school. The state has an extraordinarily strong reason to guarantee that that all young people receive a solid education and opportunities to realize their full potential. This incentive is not at all as strong in municipalities that lose all their young people to universities in larger cities.
Why did we not see it coming?
In fact, it should have been possible to see what would happen. It is extremely attractive to sell goods and services to public authorities. The customer is not only flushed with cash but legally obliged to buy; the cost of capital is low; it is easy to enter the market; the risk is almost non-existent; advance payment is common and the cost of product development is negligible. In the early 1990s, the “school market” in Sweden was opened to virtually anyone who could rent a square room for thirty students. The state abdicated and during the first fifteen years, in practice, all applicants were approved.
The main players in this market were municipalities; a number of companies of varying size that ran schools for profit as well as students and parents who were free to choose school. Students brought with them a voucher of a fixed value. Crucial to the success of private actors was therefore to fill the classrooms. They could choose between two strategies. The hope expressed in the government’s bills was that they would invest in high quality and pedagogical renewal at the same time as competition would guarantee a wise management of resources. This strategy requires investment over a longer period of time. The company must be able to recruit the best teachers; provide attractive premises; have a well-equipped library and access to various types of support staff. It may work, but it requires at least two things. There must be an independent body that evaluates and informs about the high quality and customers must demand a good education and not primarily be interested in good grades. A faster way is to keep costs down. If this strategy is chosen, the quality-adjusted teacher density will be lower; the school library may be missing; premises and schoolyards are less efficient and the nurse is seldom seen. The most important thing for frugal school entrepreneurs is to be able to select students. If it succeeds, the dividend will be doubled. Caring and problem-free students with highly educated parents create an attractive study environment that attracts other students and teachers while keeping costs down. A troubled boy with reading and writing difficulties costs more than school fees. For a school that invests in reducing costs, it becomes almost inevitable to dog-whistle that high grades can be obtained without too much work.
That competition would lead to grade inflation should not have come as a surprise. It arises in all markets where schools have a financial incentive to compete for students. This is very true for many American universities. Michael Parkin states in his textbook Macroeconomics that “grade inflation, well documented in many schools, is particularly characteristic of Ivy League universities.” The cost of studying at the top universities is very high. It is then natural that the customer wants value for money and the universities have every reason to oblige. At Princeton, the situation became so alarming that management was forced to decide that only a third of the students could be considered for the highest grade. It is actually quite obvious that schools-for-profit will provide high grades if that is what the customer demands. Swedish parents and students are very keen to get good grades – they may be worth millions – and Swedish for-profit schools have at least as strong arguments as American universities to satisfy the customer’s wishes. However, we are alone in letting the taxpayer foot the bill.
If high grades become a desirable benefit for students and parents (regardless of whether they reflect knowledge and skills), we should expect that this demand is primarily met in municipalities where private and municipal schools compete. Profit-driven schools must fill the classrooms and the municipal ones must keep up. The high grades are then not necessarily a result of increased knowledge but of the competition itself. The effect is likely to be visibly greater in upper secondary schools than in primary schools.
We can now see the results. The quality-adjusted teacher density is and has always been much higher in municipal schools and the difference is greatest at upper secondary school level. The cost of students is clearly lower in schools run by joint-stock companies. These companies have been extremely successful in selecting students from socio-economically strong backgrounds. Admission on the basis of queuing time practically excludes newly arrived young people.
High school diplomas are worth many millions because they provide access to attractive higher education. All indications show that parents and students prioritize grades over education and educational experiments. Children of highly educated parents manage even if the school’s teaching is mediocre. Teachers complain about late evening calls from aggressive parents. Complaints are almost always about grades – rarely about substandard education. It is therefore inevitable that competition drives joy ratings. At the same time as Swedish students’ performance according to all measurements has fallen since the mid-1990s, the grades have skyrocketed. The tendency to give joy ratings is greater in profit-driven schools and in municipalities where competition with municipal schools is stronger.
When the state handed over the responsibility of education to the municipalities, several school politicians warned of what would happen. What no one seems to have expected is that many municipal politicians would abandon their own schools and wholeheartedly invest in attracting profit-driven schools to establish themselves. The large school groups, especially the International English School, have not only been overcompensated by the regular school fees. In many cases, they have also received bespoke subsidies from municipalities.
Who gets the money and what did we get for it?
Despite the fact that schools run by joint-stock companies since almost thirty years have received 10 – 25 percent more than they have earned, they apparently have a hard time making ends meet. The standard answer from the National Association of Independent Schools is that the profit margin is a modest 3,5 percent. This is reminiscent of the old story of the CEO who asked his auditor what the profit was and got the counter-question: What do you want it to be? When Mr Ilmar Reepalu was commissioned to investigate a profit ceiling of 7 percent, we were told that the industry would wither away if this became a reality. The finance company in Luxembourg, Paradigm Capital, which in 2020 bought out the International English School from the stock exchange for just over SEK 3 billion, is not known for investing in low-yielding assets. The capital that forms the basis for the percentage is a highly malleable entity. The traditional way to hide an uncomfortably large profit is to buy services from other companies in the group (which are often in a more attractive tax jurisdiction) at a premium. For instance, school companies can pay high rents for the premises they have in many cases acquired for a song from a friendly-minded municipality. High executive salaries also lower profits. Managers in private companies have a remuneration that the country’s prime minister does not even dare to dream of. Ann-Marie Lindgren reports, in her well-documented paper Every wasted tax crown, that the CEO salaries in the six largest health and care companies in 2019 averaged 7 million or 580,000 a month. In the same year, the directors general who led three authorities with supervisory responsibility for healthcare (the National Board of Health and Welfare, the Swedish Public Health Agency and the Swedish Health and Care Inspectorate) together received a monthly salary of approximately 370,000.
We can also be sure that the money does not go to high teacher salaries and student care. In both these respects, private schools have clearly lower costs. Many municipalities have also used the opportunity to subsidize rents. Mr Tobias Johansson-Berg, professor of business administration, has recently suggested that instead of limiting profits, school companies should open their books and openly show what money is used for.
But more important, of course, is the added value we are promised as a result of competition between municipal schools and those run as joint-stock companies. The award-winning journalist Mr Kristoffer Örstadius has for several years studied results and grades in Swedish schools. In a popular article, he anonymised some schools’ PISA results and was able to show that the students in the acclaimed English school in Bromma had clearly worse results in mathematics than those who went to the municipal low-performing Petrus Magni school in Vadstena – but the girls and boys in Bromma received better grades. His latest fact-checked article in Dagens Nyheter (2022-02-18) is mainly about primary schools and is based on a comparison between the schools’ final grades and the national tests. It then turns out that “the grades are…systematically more generous in independent schools than in municipal schools. The difference is significant in all school subjects with national tests except Swedish” An interesting circumstance is that the independent schools that are run as joint-stock companies are more likely to give joy ratings than those that are run in the form of foundations. It is also clear that national tests have a restraining effect. In uncontrolled subjects such as art, music and home economics, all inhibitions are thrown to the winds as far as grade inflation is concerned in private schools – especially in the three largest groups.
Örstadius refers to several studies that show that independent upper secondary schools give more generous grades than municipal ones. But despite its lower grade point average, “municipal” students perform better in the first year of university than students from high schools that are run as joint-stock companies. This is in line with the conclusion of a study from the National Agency for Education, From upper secondary school to university, which studied the students who went directly from high schools to the university in the academic year 2014/15:
“The students who have attended an independent upper secondary school have lower performance – despite the fact that this group generally has slightly higher grades from upper secondary school. This difference applies to students at different levels of grade points, and to each of the college preparatory programs.”
The School Commission stated, like many others, that the Swedish schools no longer provide equivalent education for all pupils. Above all, the young people who have the worst conditions have been left in the lurch. The growing segregation is essentially due to other factors, but the promised reduction has not materialized. That competition would contribute to cooperation and synergy was never credible. Home and School associations no longer have a meaningful role in municipalities with a fragmented school system. The pedagogical renewal is not visible. If we accept that higher education credits are an adequate way of measuring the quality of the school, the experiment that began in 1991/92 seems to have produced negative added value.
Towards a brighter future?
The legal institution of limited companies was created in order to give entrepreneurs the opportunity to run profitable businesses with limited personal risk. As long as we allow these companies to sell educational services in Sweden, it will be difficult and expensive to steer development in the right direction with rules and controls. The incentives to provide customers with joy ratings and keep costs down by choosing “cheap” students are compellingly strong. When the “children’s experiment” (Barnexperimentet) began shortly after the school was communalized, the state largely relinquished responsibility for the activities. For a short time, even the activities of private schools were classified. As the need for transparency and control increases, a chorus of teachers testifies to the documentation hysteria that has befallen them.
Nationalizing the school is a step in the right direction, even if part of the business is still run by profit-motivated joint-stock companies. Education from an early age to university studies is society’s most important “production” of genuine public benefit. As shown, the state has a clearly stronger interest than municipalities in giving students a solid foundation for a future professional career and competence to pursue university studies. No matter how a grant system is designed, it must be equal in all municipalities according to the Education Act.
It is of course possible to let university entrance exams determine who gets admission to university studies. However, it will be expensive and opportunistic. The training would focus on passing a test. But above all, we would lose the information value of the grades. An old-fashioned high school diploma – a teacher’s assessment after following their students for three years – has proved to be an excellent and broad proof of competence. The focus should preferably be on strengthening the legitimacy of the grades.
Magnus Henrekson et. al. mention, in the book Kunskapssyn och pedagogi the possibility of having anonymised tests corrected by independent assessors. One such system – the International Baccalaurate Diploma Program – is available in 127 countries and offers tuition at 30 upper secondary schools in Sweden. It is expensive but possible.
Penalty fees against schools that obviously issue joy grades are not appealing. Neither is it possible to tolerate that some schools raise the grades and steal university places from young people who have earned them. In a state system, it would be easier to solve this problem for the simple reason that the state really wants to do something about it.
A simpler alternative is to set the minimum subsidy at 75 percent of the average municipal school fee (it was enough once upon a time) and pay private schools for reported extra costs. This would require the open accounting of the school groups that professor Johansson-Berg advocates.
All these proposals will be met with furious criticism from the school groups’ advocates. It is then important to remember that the experiment was never aimed at creating profitable joint-stock companies that ran schools, but at developing a school system that give all children and young people a chance to “realize the desire of their best moods.”
The program that the present Minister of Education, Ms Lina Axelsson Kihlbom, recently announced is very promising. It addresses a number of issues. Student admission should be fair. The school’s focus on knowledge must be strengthened. We will have better conditions for security and study peace – and the teachers will decide in the classroom. Municipalities should be given the opportunity to reduce the compensation to profit-driven schools because they have a lower cost responsibility. It is all well and good but what happens if municipalities want to overcompensate the school groups?
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