The Corporate Surge Against Public Schools
By
Steven Miller and Jack Gerson
The Summary
It’s
more than a year since we wrote “Exterminating Public Education” (see below
this article) in response to the “Tough Choices or Tough Times” report of the National
Commission on Skills in the Workplace (www.skillscommission.com).
That
report, funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and
signed by a bipartisan collection of prominent politicians, businesspeople, and
urban school superintendents, called for a series of measures including: (a)
replacing public schools with what the report called “contract schools”, which
would be charter schools writ large; (b) eliminating nearly all the powers of
local school boards—their role would be to write and sign the authorizing
agreements for the “contract schools; (c) eliminating teacher pensions and
slashing health benefits; and (d) forcing all 10th graders to take a
high school exit examination based on 12th grade skills, and
terminating the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing millions of
students out into the streets as they turn 16).
These
measures, taken together, would effectively cripple public control of public
education. They would dangerously weaken the power of teacher unions, thus
facilitating still further attacks on the public sector. They would leave
education policy in the hands of a network of entrepreneurial think tanks,
corporate entrepreneurs, and armies of lobbyists whose priorities are profiting
from the already huge education market while cutting back on public funding for
schools and students.
Indeed,
their measures would mean privatization of education, effectively terminating
the right to a public education, as we have known it. Many of the most powerful
forces in the country want the
For
the last fifty years, public education was one of only two public mandates
guaranteed by the government that was accessible to every person, regardless of
income. Social Security is the other. Now both systems are threatened with
privatization schemes. The government today openly defines its mission as
protecting the rights of corporations above everything. Thus public education
is a rare public space that is under attack.
The
same scenario is being implemented with most of the services that governments
used to provide for free or at little cost: electricity, national parks, health
care and water. In every case, the methodology is the same: under-fund public services, create an uproar
and declare a crisis, claim that privatization can do the job better,
deregulate or break public control, divert public money to corporations and
then raise prices.
In
the past year, it’s become evident that the corporate surge against public
schools is only part of a much broader assault against the public sector,
against unions, and indeed against the public’s rights and public control of
public institutions.
This
has been evident for some time now in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina’s
devastation is used as an excuse for permanently privatizing the infrastructure
of a major American city: razing public housing and turning land over to
developers; replacing the city’s public school system with a combination of
charter schools and state-run schools; letting the notorious Blackwater private
army loose on the civilian population; and, in the end, forcing tens of
thousands of families out of the city permanently. The citizens of
Just
as the shock of the hurricane was the excuse for the shock therapy applied to
In
In
public education, the corporate surge has grown both qualitatively and
quantitatively. Where two years ago the corporate education change agents were
mainly operating in a relatively small number of large urban areas, they have
now surfaced everywhere. The corporatization of public education is the leading
edge of privatization. This has the effect of silencing the public voice on
every aspect of the situation.
Across
the
Perhaps
the single most dramatic development of the corporate approach was the
launching of the $60 million
Ed
in ’08 has a three-point program: merit pay (basing teachers’ compensation on
students’ scores on high stakes test); national education standards (enforcing
conformity and rote learning); and longer school day and school year (still
more time for rote learning, less time for kids to be kids). The chairman of Ed
in ‘08/Strong American Schools program is Roy Romer: former
governor of
Other steering committee members include
Eli Broad; Louis Gerstner (former CEO of IBM); Allan Golston (head of the Gates
Foundation’s
Where
two years ago charter schools were still viewed as experiments affecting a
relatively small number of students, in 2007 the corporate privatizers—led by
Broad and Gates—grossly expanded their funding to the point where they now loom
as a major presence.
In
March, the Gates Foundation announced a $100 million donation to KIPP charter
schools, which would enable them to expand their
NCLB
in 2008 is still a major issue. It continues to have a corrosive effect on public
schools. It is designed an unfunded mandate, which means that schools must meet
ever rigid standards every year, though no more money is appropriated to
support this effort. This means that schools must take ever-more money out of
the classroom to meet federal requirements when schools with low test scores
are in “Program Improvement”. Once schools are in PI for 5 years they can be
forced into privatization.
NCLB
is a driving force that decimates the “publicness” in public schools. In
For
example, schools in 3rd year PI must take money out of programs that
helped schools with a high proportion of low achieving schools and make it
available to private tutors. (
The
struggles of the Civil Rights Era made people realize that quality education
was a right that everyone deserves. Education today, whether public or private,
is a social policy. We make choices about how far it is extended, what the
purpose is, what quality is offered, and to whom. Now that wealth is polarizing
in this country, corporate forces are determined to create a social system that
benefits the “Haves” while excluding the “Have-Nots”.
Privatizing
public schools inevitable leads to massive increase in social inequality.
Private corporations have never been required to recognize civil rights,
because, by definition, these are public rights. If the corporate privatizers
succeed in taking over our schools, there will be neither quality education nor
civil rights.
The
system of public education in the
Central
to this is to challenge the idea that everything in human society should be run
by corporations, that only corporations and their political hacks have the
right or the power to discuss what public policy should be. As Naomi Klein
stated so well in The Shock Doctrine, privatization “will remain
entrenched until the corporate supremacist ideology that underpins it is
identified, isolated and challenged”. (p 14)
The
real direction is to increase the role and power of the public in every way,
not eliminate it. If we can spend $2.5 billion a week for war in
Contents
The
sections below examine only some of the major privatizing in public education
in the last year. “A Tale of Two Cities” examines how corporate-dictated
educational policies seriously eroded the quality of education in
A Tale of Two
Cities
l The public
schools in
The
state came in with a pretense of fiscal responsibility, but quickly doubled the
debt. The real purpose was to change a captive city’s public education into the
corporate model. Randolph Ward, the first state-administrator, quickly shut
down the high school newspapers, closed schools, opened charters, eliminated
libraries, counselors, electives and support staff, especially in the poor
Flatland schools. Schools became profit centers, based on high-stakes testing
and scripted learning. This was a classic bait and switch scheme, similar to what
is now happening in
For
four years, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has been a captive
laboratory for corporate-style education:
“It
has been hailed as a national model of education reform, a school district
where public-private partnerships combined with strong leadership and vision to
completely transform a long struggling public education system.”
“School
districts from coast to coast had seen pieces of what Oakland was experiencing,
but rarely – if ever – had all the planets supporting meaningful reform aligned
themselves together like they did in Oakland back then” (2005 –ed).
“Together
these forces (a state-appointed administrator, philanthropists and key
community organizations – ed) set out to turn the
(“
Despite
the alignment of the planets, after 4 years of state-appointed administrators,
the district was further in debt than ever with little positive to show for it.
In fact, the state take-over was virtually a hostile corporate take-over by
billionaire Eli Broad, who hand picked all
important district personnel. Since the community had lost its voice, 42
of 98 schools have been closed, charterized as
or made into “small schools”. 62% of
Suddenly,
to everyone’s surprise, it turns out that charter schools actually cost the
district money. The district loses Average Daily Attendance (ADA) revenue from
the state for every child that went to a charter school. Furthermore in
Under
the state regime, every cut in the educational program lead to an attack on
teachers and every attack on teachers guaranteed cuts to the educational
program. Libraries, counselors, nurses and psychologists disappeared in schools
in the poor parts of town. Kindergarten was extended to a full day schedule,
without naps, so the children could take standardized tests. However, since
younger students cannot be trusted to bubble in the forms correctly, teachers
are forced to fill out hundreds of forms for them on their own time. As always,
when corporate forces take control, the quality of education is dramatically reduced.
To
support this effort, corporate forces came forward to raise more than $40
million for OUSD “to redesign the central office” and refused to allocate even
a penny of this money to the classroom. However, administrators are leaving the
schools at an alarming rate, the highest in the state, despite the money.
Meanwhile, the debt is being paid for by the children, since a portion is
deducted from the classroom, from the (
Until
the last few years, and since World War II,
l The
publication of Naomi Klein’s important book, The Shock Doctrine, in 2007
tore the veil away from the vast efforts to privatize every aspect of
government that has been a growing trend in the
“The
Bush administration immediately seized upon the fear generated by the attacks
to not only launch the “War on Terror” but to insure that it is an almost
completely for-profit venture, a booming new industry that has breathed life in
to the faltering US economy. Best understood as a “disaster capitalism complex”
it has much farther-reaching tentacles than the military-industrial complex
Dwight Eisenhower warned against at the end of his presidency…
“To
kick-start the disaster capitalism complex, the Bush administration outsourced,
with no public debate, many of the most sensitive and core functions of
government – from providing health care to soldiers, to interrogating
prisoners, to gathering and ‘data mining’ information on all of us.” (Klein. The Shock Doctrine.
P 12)
“Within
weeks, the
(Klein. The Shock Doctrine, p 410-411)
Though
in declining health, the guru of privatization, Milton Friedman wrote an
article entitled “The Promise of Vouchers” in the December 5, 2005 Wall Street
journal, where he demanded the privatization of every public school New Orleans
city through vouchers. George Bush
quickly appropriated $30 million. However, in 2006, the
The
schools were summarily closed and reopened as charters. Every teacher was fired
and then selectively re-hired. The control of the schools was given to Paul
Vallas, the first “CEO” of Chicago Public Schools who pioneered the corporate
approach. Vallas had been head of
The
result is described by New Orleans Loyola University Law Professor, attorney
Bill Quigley:
“There is a massive experiment being performed on thousands of
primarily African American children in
“This is the experiment.
“The First Half
“Half of the nearly 30,000 children expected to enroll in the fall
of 2007 in New Orleans public schools have been enrolled in special public
schools, most called charter schools. These schools have been given tens of
millions of dollars by the federal government in extra money, over and above their
regular state and local money, to set up and operate. These special public
schools are not open to every child and do not allow every student who wants to
attend to enroll. Some charter schools have special selective academic criteria
which allow them to exclude children in need of special academic help. Other
charter schools have special admission policies and student and parental
requirements which effectively screen out many children. The children in this
half of the experiment are taught by accredited teachers in manageable size
classes. There are no overcrowded classes because these charter schools have
enrollment caps allowing them to turn away students. These schools also educate
far fewer students with academic or emotional disabilities. Children in charter
schools are in better facilities than the other half of the children. These
schools are getting special grants from Laura Bush to rebuild their libraries
and grants from other foundations to help them educate. These schools do
educate some white children along with African-American children. These are
public schools, but they are not available to all public school students.
“The Other Half
“The other half of public school students, over ten thousand
children, have been assigned to a one-year-old experiment in public education
run by the State of
“The
RSD schools have not been given millions of extra federal dollars to operate.
The new RSD has inexperienced leadership. Many critical vacancies exist in
their already-insufficient district-wide staff. Many of the teachers are
uncertified. In fact, the RSD schools do not yet have enough teachers, even
counting the uncertified, to start school in the fall of 2007. Some of the RSD
school buildings scheduled to be used for the fall of 2007 have not yet been
built.
“In
the first year of this experiment, the RSD had one security guard for every 37
students. Students at John McDonough High said their RSD school, which employed
more guards than teachers, had a "prison atmosphere." In some
schools, children spent long stretches of their school days in the gymnasium
waiting for teachers to show up to teach them.
“There
is little academic or emotional counseling in the RSD schools. Children with
special needs suffer from lack of qualified staff. College-prep math and
science classes and language immersion are rarely offered. Classrooms keep
filling up as new children return to
“Many
of the RSD schools do not have working kitchens or water fountains. Bathroom
facilities are scandalous. Teachers at one school report there are two
bathrooms for the entire school - one for all the male students, faculty and
staff and another for all the females in the building.
“Hardly
any white children attend this half of the school experiment. These are the
public schools available to the rest of the public school students.’
(“
Quigley accurately describes how charter systems quickly evolve
towards well-funded, niche schools for the Haves and schools of depravation for
the Have-Nots. He also clearly exposes the lie that charter schools are “public
schools”. Their management lacks the public accountability of public schools,
do not have to report to the public and can pick and choose their students,
something that public schools cannot do.
At the same time charter schools often receive vast private
donations of funds that provide them with tremendously greater resources than
public schools. Nevertheless, the do not show significant achievement.
(“Blowback – The Myth of Charter School Success”, LA Times, February 12, 2008 - http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/laoewshaffer12feb12,0,938309.story)
How strange that public schools are increasingly tied to
standards, regimented learning, and high stakes testing, while charter schools
are urged to innovate and experiment! Certainly there exist both public and
charter schools that are creative. People are also not always in the position
when they can pick and choose. However in
Both
in Oakland and New Orleans, state power was used to usurp the public’s control
of their schools and to force into place a corporate vision of schools without
public discussion. In both cases, the loss of civil rights over public schools
has meant a drastic worsening in the quality of educational delivery. This
experience is a huge indicator for the direction of public education in other
cities, where corporate power is beginning to make in roads.
Creating an
Educational Market… (The Plan)
A
year ago we wrote in “Exterminating Public Schools”:
“The
significance of the report (“Tough Choices” –ed) is that the march towards the
privatization of public schools came completely out of the closet in 2006. No
longer is it a hidden agenda. Now the open campaigning will begin, the lobbying
and bribery will ensue and laws will be debated to change public schools in the
corporate direction”.
This
report presents some of the most significant efforts towards privatization.
In May, the NY Sun published an example of the corporate attitude
to public education, in this case, from Fortress Investment Corp:
“As investors, the group's
leaders spend their days searching for hidden diamonds in the rough: businesses
the market has left for dead, but a savvy investor could turn for a profit. A
big inner-city school system, Mr. Tilson explained, is kind of like that — the
General Motors of the education world. ‘I see very, very similar dynamics: very
large bureaucratic organizations that have become increasingly disconnected
from their customers; that are producing an inferior product and losing
customers; that are heavily unionized,’ he said. A successful charter school,
on the other hand, is like ‘
(“How New Generation
of Reformers Targets Democrats on Education”.
Time
Magazine’s glowing praise of privatization could not hide the cynicism of
people who intend to profit from the misery of others:
“Paul Vallas, the man who took over the troubled school systems of
Chicago and then Philadelphia and upended them, stood before a crowd of New
Orleans parents in a French Quarter courtyard earlier this summer and offered a
promise. ‘This will be the greatest opportunity for educational entrepreneurs,
charter schools, competition and parental choice in
Call it the silver lining: Hurricane Katrina washed away what was
one of the nation's worst school systems and opened the path for energetic
reformers who want to make New Orleans a laboratory of new ideas for urban
schools. “ (Time, 9-6-07)
This
is the corporate approach to what are left of the public schools. Apologists
blithely call this “creating an education market”. How exactly do you take
something that most Americans still consider a public entitlement and make a
profit out of it? Bush’s educational law, No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) plays an
essential role:
“There
are steps that would make K-12 schooling more attractive to for-profit
investment, triggering a significant infusion of money to support research,
development and creative problem-solving. For one, imposing clear standards for
judging educational effectiveness would reassure investors that ventures will
be less subject to political brickbats and better positioned to succeed if
demonstrably effective. A more performance-based environment enables investors
to assess risk in a more informed, rational manner.
(Educational
Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, Possibilities, 2006, edited by Fredrick M Hess, p 252)
“In
sum, NCLB represents an enormous challenge to the status quo in public
education and has the potential to create a major opening for entrepreneurs
inside and outside of the public system. Since NCLB passed, a large number of
schools across the country have been identified as ‘in need of improvement’ for
failing to meet AYP targets”.
(Educational
Entrepreneurshjp. p 80)
Almost
all the entrepreneurial proposals are aimed at central cities, where the
corporate vision is touted as the historic solution to decades of discrimination
in public education.
Suddenly,
out of the blue in 2007, we hear about Educational Maintenance Organizations
(EMOs). These private corporations, like HMOs, are proposing to dispense
services that people used to expect from our governments. Corporations now
realize that owning individual schools is not the major direction for profit.
Rather they intend to provide services to schools in the aggregate, regardless
of schools succeed or fail. Thus these corporations become targets for
investment. Whether private corporations actually can provide public
education will be examined in the last section below.
Congressmen
quickly anointed themselves as experts in education and proclaimed that merit
pay for teachers could be “measured” by considering their “value-added” – the
amount that student test scores improved or declined! It is a tribute to
central city teachers that they did not immediately move to the suburbs, so
that their students could suddenly achieve so much better!
Interestingly
enough, the corporate model for public schools is 100% untested. In fact,
recent studies done by the government on scripted learning show that it does
not work very well at all. In 2007, Peter Henry published an important, easily
accessible, and well documented report, “The Case Against Standardized Testing”
(www.mcte.org/journal/mej07/3Henry.pdf).
”But,
putting all this aside, let’s return to the central premise: student effort will increase when there is
‘more’ riding on a test’s outcome. Astoundingly, there is no research data
showing that such ‘high-stakes’ environments actually work to improve effort,
achievement or scholarship. None.” (p
43)
“Let
me say this again because it is terribly important: There are no large-scale,
peer-reviewed academic studies that prove, or even suggest, that a high-stakes,
standardized testing educational program improves learning, skill development
or achievement for students.” (p 45)
Therefore, the entire justification for the corporate educational
model is completely and absolutely unproven. The whole high-stakes scam is
deconstructed in detail at www.fairtest.org. The poor have always been forced to endure scripted
learning and high stakes testing, simply because it is cheaper than providing
the same enriching educational experiences that the wealthy receive.
Corporate corruption, however, inevitably blooms when public
control is gutted. Reading First – a $4 billion scripted reading program
favored by George Bush – was charged, in a scathing report, by the Inspector
General’s Office with a variety of scams in 2006.
(www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=17185)
Philanthropreneurs (The Agents)
This
apparatus is directed by a group of billionaire “philanthropreneurs” who are
dead-set on engineering the corporate take-over of US public schools. Including
billionaires Bill Gates, Michael Milliken, the Dell family, the Waltons and
Donald Fischer (The Gap), the group’s point billionaire is Eli Broad (as in
“toad”) who has defined the current strategy. Using their vast private wealth
and their base in private corporations, they have moved to take over the debate
over how to improve
In the past six years, The Broad Foundation has invested more than
$56 million to support the growth of charter schools in a small number of
cities including
Broad is quite open about billionaires’
ability to do end runs around local governments, “What smart, entrepreneurial
philanthropists and their foundations do is get greater value for how they
invest their money than if the government were doing it.” (“Age of Riches - Big Gifts, Tax
Breaks and a Debate on Charity”. Stephanie Strom. September 6, 2007)
The Broad Institute trains school
superintendents, school boards and even union leaders in what they consider
“appropriate corporate approaches”. A central problem for corporate privatizers
is the issue of governance, ie who has legal authority over the schools. Broad
favors state take-overs (New Orleans, Washington DC, Oakland, Ca, St. Louis) or
mayoral takeovers (Chicago, Pittsburg, attempted last year by Villaregosa in
LA) to eliminate messy interference from the public.
The
“Tough Choices” report mentioned above is quite clear about eliminating the
public’s right to control their schools:
“First,
the role of school boards would change. Schools would no longer be owned
by local school districts. Instead, schools would be operated by independent
contractors, many of them limited-liability corporations owned and
run by teachers. The primary role of school district central offices would be
to write performance contracts with the operators of these schools, monitor their
operations, cancel or decide not to renew the contracts of those providers that
did not perform well, and find others that could do better. … The contract
schools would be public schools, subject to all of the safety, curriculum,
testing and other accountability of public schools”.
(“Tough
Choices” - “Executive Summary”, p 16, emphasis added)
The
“Tough Choices” study was quickly followed by a report from
This
is a classic example of how corporations usurp public debate with glitzy
reports from private research groups, entrepreneurial donations and influencing
government decisions behind the scenes.
By
April 2007, Gates and Broad announced that they were tired of the incremental
approach to school change. They donated $60 million to build a multi-media
campaign to influence the 2008 election by forcing the corporate vision of
education into elections across the country. Instead of addressing historically
neglected populations, segregation and issues of equal, quality education, the
campaign, Strong American Schools, will focus on three issues. Supposedly a
standardized national curriculum, merit pay and lengthening the school year
will solve all problems.
The
Ed in ‘08/Strong American Schools program is an unheard-of, private effort to
completely change public policy on schools essentially by buying their way into
every electoral forum.
Gates and Broad intend to use this effort
to completely change the debate about public education in the corporate
direction.
Further
Inroads into Public Education (The Campaigns)
l In
Corporate
nepotism grew even more incestuous in August, when Oakland’s second state-administrator,
Kim Statham (a Broad trainee), quit and was immediately hired to be the chief
academic officer of Washington DC schools by Broad graduate and past Oakland
city Manager, Robert Bobb.
Bobb is on record supporting Broad's many educational initiatives,
among them the 10-month leadership academy he attended in 2005. The academy,
Bobb said, taught him a lot about the use of data and getting access to experts
and other resources. "He is putting his money where his mouth is,"
Bobb said.
Money is definitely an issue alright. Brenda Belton, former
charter oversight chief for the DC Board of Education plead guilty in 2007 to
massive theft from the low-performing school system. She admitted to arranging
about $649,000 in illegal school payments and sweetheart contracts to herself
and her friends.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/District+of+Columbia+Board+of+Education?tid=informline)
Not to be outdone, in
l In
Corporate
education policies and privatizations spread in 2007 from a few large urban
school districts to cities across the country, including Oklahoma City,
Pittsburg, Houston, Los Angeles and St Louis to name a few.
l
The
June Supreme Court decision cut the legs out from the 1954 Brown v Board of Ed
decision, which held that segregation was inherently unequal, further advanced
the corporate agenda. By recognizing de
facto segregation, the decision is a statement of things to come.
It
is well known that schools in
How
can anyone now use the courts to block schools that discriminate based on
individual cases? As corporate charter schools come in – and they regularly
either reject low-achieving children or drive them out (the accountability
issues multiply with each new charter) – how can we legally fight for equality
or equal education?
There
is another side to Brown. Before Brown the issue of the quality of education
never before appeared in law. No one had a problem if African-American kids in
By saying that separate education was
inherently unequal, Brown set the floor for the quality of public education.
This was the first time that the quality of public education gained an legal
standing. The current decision definitely guts this. In their future, the
quality of education will be what corporations demand.
n
In
another decision – the “Honk for Peace” case from
As a federal appeals court in
n
At
the beginning of 2007, the renewal of NCLB seemed inevitable. Petitions to end
it began on the Educatorroundtable website and others around the country.
Opposition grew rapidly and public pressure on politicians greatly increased.
By the end of the year, the issue was postponed, unresolved, into 2008. Law
suits were filed to attack one of the most destructive elements of NCLB, that
it is unfunded. This fact alone, of all the inequities built into the law,
reveals the bankruptcy of the corporate model in all of its ramifications.
Those that have are imposing educational standards for those that don’t,
ostensibly to raise them up, but really to keep the down.
Public
Education and Health Care
There
is an unspoken assumption about privatizing public schools that corporations
and EMOs really don’t want to discuss. The question is this: will privatizing
the schools actually lead to better public education? Let’s examine this more
closely.
Public
education is quite similar to health care, a human need that is already highly
privatized in the
HMOs
make their money dispensing medications and treatments, not by providing the
quality of care. Both hospitals and nurse salaries are usually considered a
necessary loss to corporate profit. Consequently they both are being curtailed
across the country. The entire health industry is now configured by Wall Street
as a bundle of investment opportunities. This completely undermines the quality
of service. This too is the “entrepreneurial” direction for public schools.
Both
health care and education heavily rely on human labor to provide services. Both
require nurturing and direct personal care to get results. Everyone remembers
the teachers that made a real difference to them, the people who took their
time and worked with them until they finally got it right. Therein lies the
problem for corporations.
The
value of any commodity is the amount of human labor-time involved in its
production. This law however clashes directly with profit-making for both
health care and education. Nurses must put more time into clinically assisting
terminally ill patients. Teachers put less time into a straight A student than
they so into a Special Education student. In each case, this means that, for
corporations, too much labor is being put in the wrong direction. Hence,
charter schools have the right to pick their students. Quite consistently, they
refuse to accept students with Special Ed needs or students they perceive to be
low-achievers.
The
direction of health care is to seek profitability with niche hospitals that
cater to the needs of the wealthy, just as
The
privatization of public education will be driven by the profit motive in the
same direction. As we have seen above, investment possibilities and corporate
profits are increasingly usurping the discussion. Even a decade ago,
The
result for education will be identical to health care. Privatization means the
withdrawal to the right of quality education. Government will no longer accept
responsibility for the quality of public education. This will be taken over by
private corporations who, as they already do in most charter schools today,
refuse to be held accountable.
The
big difference between public education and health care is that a national
system of public schools was constructed during the last century, while health
care has always been private. Public schools have taught six generations of
Americans social values that corporate privatizers would prefer to ignore:
“play fair”, “share, “If you break it, clean it up, “ and “everybody gets to
play”. If you ever attended a private school, including universities, you know
that these values do not exactly lead the discussion.
Privatizing
public education will destroy that system, just as privatizing the rain forest
leads to carving it up for sale. Public schools and public values do not have
to become a thing of the past. While this process is well underway, it does not
have to come to pass. We can fight forward to a cooperative system where real
public control will build schools that can truly open up our human potential.
Qualilty public education is a civil right!
Steven
Miller – nanodog2@hotmail.com
Jack
Gerson -
(jackrgerson@gmail.com)
Background
& Resources (These are
just a few resources that detail the corporate assault on public education.)
Eli Broad et
al
“Eli's Experiment”. Robert
Gammon,
“The
Broad Connection”. Berkeley Daily Planet, July 24,
2007,www.berkeleyplanetdailypaper.com
“Filling
the Civic Gap – Meet Donald Fisher”. Matt Smith. SF Weekly 6-21-06.
“Age of Riches” - Big Gifts, Tax Breaks
and a Debate on Charity. Stephanie Strom.
September 6, 2007
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-is-joel-klein-broading.html
“Foundation money may aid city high school makeover”. By Joe Smydo,
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=6376&IssueNum=229
“District's Ex-Charter Schools Chief Admits Fraud”. Carol D.
Leonnig.
“TFA Teams With Districts to Groom Aspiring Principals”. By Lynn
Olson. Education Week
Published in Print: October 3, 2007
“Out-of-state consultants critique city school district”. Jeff
Raymond.
The Oklahoman. (http://newsok.com/article/3090052). Tue July 24, 2007.
http://newsok.com/article/3090052
A
Crisis in Education?
“Just Another Big Con: The Crisis in Mathematics and Science
Education”. Dennis W. Redovich. Center for the Study of Jobs & Education in
November 2007
“High-stakes Flim Flam”. Bob Herbert.
October 9, 2007
“Five Myths About
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Getting Down to Facts: School
Finance and Governance in
Susanna Loeb, Anthony Bryk, and
Eric Hanushek
“Getting Down to Facts” is an
independent research project commissioned by The
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,
The James Irvine Foundation, and The Stuart
Foundation.
“Schools, teachers agree on merit pay”.
newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--nycmeritpay1017oct17,0,4066984.story.
Newsday.com. October 17, 2000
“NOLA's
Failed Education Experiment - Privatization runs amok in the post-Katrina
August
15, 2007 (web only)
June
2007
Substance.
September 2007. www.substance.com
“The Charter School Flood” The Nation,
September 10, 2007
Charter
Schools
“Exploding the
www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/opinion/27sun1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Hill,
Angel, Christensen.
Jim Vail. “
Public vs Private
“The
Corporations vs. Public Education”. Peoples Tribune - September, 2007.
www.peoplestribune.org
Steven
Miller. “Should the Future Be Privatized?” http://www.educatorroundtable.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=269
http://www.thefoxinthehenhouse.com/
www.ncpr.org,
“Strategic Grant Making”
Alfie
Kohn. “Case Against ‘Tougher Standards’ - One-Size-Fits-All Doesn't Make the
Grade”
Peter Henry. “The Case Against Standardized Testing”
“
Fred Smith. “Up The
“Career Opportunities - No Child Left Behind set off a gold rush
for tutoring companies, but
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/career_opportunities/Content?oid=643742
Gerald Bracey. “Growing an Achievement Gap”. The Huffington Pose
Posted July 15, 2007
Gerald Bracey. What You Should Know About the War Against
America’s Public Schools. 2003
Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian. Why Is Corporate
Kenneth Saltman. Capitalizing on Disaster. Taking and Breaking
Public Schools. 2007
Kenneth Saltman. Schooling and the Politics of Disaster.
2007
Supreme Court
Decision
Joint
Statement of 9 University-Based Civil Rights Centers Supreme Court Rulings
http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/policy/court/voltint_joint_full_statement.php
Web Sites
DC
schools: saveourschoolssdc@yahoo.com
www.Fairtest.org
Marion
Brady - http://home.cfl.rr.com/marion/mbrady.html
Susan
O’Hannion - http://susanohanian.org/
Gerald
Bracey - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey
Alfie
Kohn - http://www.alfiekohn.com/index.html
Personal
Opinion Paper
Exterminating Public
Education
Jack Gerson and Steven Miller, Oakland Public
Schools, California
“The merits of a
marketplace model for public education have been among the most prominent
themes in education policy discussions over the last two decades. The 2002
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, popularly known
as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), has accelerated the trend toward
private, for-profit activities in public education.”
--Alex Molnar, “For-Profit K–12 Education:
Through the Glass Darkly,” Chapter 5, Educational Entrepreneurship, Frederick
M. Hess, editor. Harvard Education Press, 2006.
The corporate campaign to privatize public
education entered a new phase on December 14, 2006 when the New
Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce released its book-length
report, Tough Choices or Tough Times, published by the
Tough Choices or Tough Times calls
for, among other things: making all public schools into something beyond
charter schools, something called “Contract Schools”; ending high school for
many students after the 10th grade; ending teacher pension plans and cutting
back on teacher health benefits; introducing merit pay and other pay
differentials for teachers; eliminating the powers of local school boards (with
the “public” schools to be owned by private companies and all regulation done
by the states).
These measures would cut the heart out of public
education, would severely penalize students, and would deal a heavy blow to
teacher unions. No one should take the report lightly:
• It was funded by some of the world’s
richest and most powerful entities (most notably, Bill Gates and his
GatesFoundation). It represents their interests and, indeed, puts forward the
current consensus
recommendations of
• It was issued by a group with a track
record: the last report issued by the Commission on the Skills of the
American Workforce helped lay the groundwork for No Child Left Behind.
Gates
Bill Gates has apparently decided to take charge
of public education in the
“With the ability to hand out more than $1
billion or more every year to U.S. educators without any external review, the
Gates Foundation looms larger in the eyes of school leaders than even the U.S.
Department of Education, which, by comparison, has only about $20 million in
truly discretionary funds. The Department may have sticks, but the Foundation
has almost all the carrots.
“In light of the size of
the Foundation's endowment, Bill Gates is now the nation's superintendent of
schools. He can support whatever he wants, based on any theory or philosophy
that appeals to him. We must all watch for signs and portents to decipher what
lies in store for American education.”
Ravitch calls Gates “The Nation’s Superintendent
of Schools.” But the nation didn’t elect Gates to run our schools, much
less to convert public schools to contract schools, to kick millions of kids
out of school after 10th grade, or to undermine teacher unions.
The Commission
In 1990 the Commission on the Skills of the
American Workforce issued the influential report titled America’s
Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! This report argued that the
The standards-based, high stakes testing
approach espoused by the 1990 Commission report and executed by NCLB has failed
miserably—so miserably that it is finally losing much of its support (NEA and
AFT have grown increasingly critical; Democratic and Republican politicians are
expressing their doubts). In fact, NCLB is up for renewal this year by the now
Democratically controlled Congress. But rather than fade quietly into the
night, the folks who brought us the 1990 report are back with a new plan for
public education.
The so-called Skills Commission is not a public
body. The report is not the result of testimony and analysis presented
democratically in open meetings, nor is it the synthesis of a public analysis
of our schools. It is a corporate vision of what corporations want. It is an
attempt to seize the debate about public education and channel it in very
specific directions.
The report is bipartisan in the sense that it
represents a broad consensus of the
What’s their
rationale?
"We" (
This vision of a dog-eat-dog world is,
unfortunately, an accurate portrayal of the dynamics of global capital. And, as
the new report admits (and even explains), automation and digitization have
made it possible for
Tough Choices or
The Commission writes:
"First, the role of school boards would
change. Schools would no longer be owned by local school districts. Instead,
schools would be operated by independent contractors, many of them
limited-liability corporations owned and run by teachers. The primary role of
school district central offices would be to write performance contracts with the
operators of these schools, monitor their operations, cancel or decide not to
renew the contracts of those providers that did not perform well, and find
others that could do better….The contract schools would be public schools,
subject to all of the safety, curriculum, testing, and other accountability of
public schools".
(“Executive Summary,” p. 16, emphasis
added)
This is exactly the same language of
de-regulation and “letting the free market decide” that gave us ENRON, the rape
of California by energy companies and the trillion dollar Savings & Loan
scandals of the early 1990's. Re-stating that contract schools are public
schools is an attempt to obfuscate the real intent. If simple “regulation and
accountability” mean public power, then Exxon is a public corporation too!
Basically, the Commission wants to change state
education codes to accommodate the kinds of exceptions and practices currently
being piloted by charter schools. In effect, all public schools would be
run like today's charter schools—run by private companies, with
"flexible" hours, longer school days, longer school years, no teacher
seniority rights, no pensions, limited health benefits, etc. Or, to put it
another way: ALL public schools would be charter schools—only the charters would
no longer be needed, because the charter exceptions would be written right into
the state education codes. The report calls their proposed schools “contract
schools,” but it’s clear that these are basically charter schools writ large.
This is so clear that the two labor members of
the commission, Morton Bahr and Dal Lawrence (past president of the
Toledo Federation of Teachers), wrote a short statement registering “concern”
that “The design for contract schools can become an open door for profiteers,”
citing the example of Ohio, “where charter school legislation has resulted in
almost universal poor student achievement, minimal accountability, and yet
considerable profits for charter operators, many with peculiar political
agendas.”
The Commission claims it will save $60 billion
on K–12 education. It does not mention that corporations today already feast on
a trillion dollar a year market based on privatizing public schools and their
services. This is the corporate plan to expand that market. It is a vision of
schools as “profit centers,” run by “entrepreneurs,” where children are
commodities. The role of the public is reduced from having the final power over
schools to being consumers. Let the buyer beware.
Students
Students would face severe tracking that would
end high school for millions of children by the 10th grade, by the ages of 15
or 16. This would be enforced by "benchmark" high school exit exams
to be administered in the 10th grade, created at the state level. The report
explicitly calls for these tests to assess high school grade level skills, not
the middle school skills that are typically “measured” by routine high school
exit exams. In other words, the Commission demands tests pitched well beyond
the current level in many states.
(1) Students who do poorly get tossed out of
school. The "Commissioners" argue that students can retake the tests
any number of times, so if they're really motivated they may eventually pass,
albeit years later, and, essentially, on their own.
(2) Students who do OK go to community college
or technical school. The door is left ajar for the possibility of letting some
students stick around high school for another couple of years to prepare for
university. Is this an escape clause for mediocre but rich suburban students?
(3) Students who do well can go on to university.
The "Commissioners" predict that 95%
of students will pass the exams because they will be motivated, and because
they will be taught by better teachers. [Right. And No Child is Left
Behind.] In fact, things will be so splendid that remediation won't be
needed—you see, students will be taught right in the lower grades and will get
it right the first time. In practice, corporations want to dump special
education and intervention programs, just like they dumped bilingual education.
The report argues that students must become
proficient in ALL areas: math, science, humanities, social sciences. And
it says that education must emphasize concepts and creativity, not just rote
learning. The Commission explicitly criticizes current standardized tests in
that regard. (So high stakes testing may go down in flames. It was always just
a means to an end—the end being the demolition of public education with the
victimization of poor children.) The new goal of all students being polymaths
is absurd. As we all know, everyone has different strengths and abilities. When
exactly did we abandon the decades-long vision of public education? This vision
guaranteed everyone an equal, quality public education precisely so that they
could be all that they could be!
Teachers
States supposedly will increase teacher pay at
expense of pensions and health benefits. The report argues that teacher
compensation is "backloaded" (heavy on benefits, light on salary)
which favors veteran teachers over new teachers. They want to turn this on its
head and propose "frontloading" (increase salary, eliminate pensions,
and cut health benefits).
This will victimize veteran teachers and
generally eliminate traditional defined-benefit pensions. The result will be to
accelerate the already unacceptably high teacher turnover rate, which is
especially destabilizing to inner city schools and communities. The report's
rationale that this will improve instruction rings hollow for at least two
reasons: a) studies show high correlation between teacher's experience and
student's achievement, so chasing out veterans will hurt students and learning;
and (b) corporations are trying to eliminate pensions and health benefits
everywhere—not just in education.
2006
The underlying assumptions in the report reveal
the typical “bait and switch” public policies that have ruined public access to
health care, created NAFTA, and have led to the war in
The significance of the report is that the march
towards the privatization of public schools came completely out of the closet
in 2006. No longer is it a hidden agenda. Now the open campaigning will begin,
the lobbying and bribery will ensue, and laws will be debated to change public
schools in the corporate direction.
There was plenty of evidence for this in 2006.
The public schools of New Orleans were almost completely privatized, charter
schools are appearing everywhere, the Mayor of Los Angeles is trying to take
over the public schools to facilitate charter school corporations, and Joel
Klein, Chancellor of New York City Public Schools (a public office and public
trust), sits as a commissioner on the (private) “Skills Commission.”
Meanwhile, the Broad Foundation—with an openly
corporate agenda—has its fingers in a hundred public school systems. Eli Broad
joins with fellow billionaires like Gates and Donald Fisher of The Gap as
“philanthropists” who have suddenly become civic-minded and want the best for
the nation’s children. During 2006 individual billionaires put billions
of dollars into foundations to control social policy in our country.
Few people are aware that the great state
university systems, including publicly funded institutions like the
Engineering the Future
How we reckon with the report’s impact, how we
learn the lessons, will help bring to pass one kind of future or another. The
implications for our country are obvious. Teachers, and everyone, must begin
speaking in the name of all society. Corporations have no problem saying this
is how things should go. Why should they have the predominant voice?
One thing is certain. The very richest
Americans, all based in hugely powerful and influential corporations, are
proposing that the
Isn’t this worthy of some public discussion and
debate? Call it what you want, when corporations meet privately to determine
what to do with a public institution, one that mainly serves the people who
must work for said corporations, this smells a lot like class warfare. You can bet
the campaign to implement contract schools will soon be pushed by the corporate
media to turn this into public policy. We will be sold on it with minimal
public discussion, without letting the people whose lives will be most altered
by this public choice have much say over it. Then suddenly the laws will have
changed.
Let’s accept the challenge. Let’s open up the
discussion of what kind of society the majority of people need and put it on
the table. Let’s make it as open and as public as possible. If we fail in this,
we will pay a bitter price. If corporations can openly call for re-engineering
society, then it is appropriate to discuss what kind of changes shall be made,
whose interests they will be made in, and who shall benefit.
Since the corporate attack is openly against the
public nature of education, there is no way to protect our hard-won gains
towards equal and public education without defending and expanding the very
nature of what “the public” means. It’s not just corporations who have the right
to put the reorganization of society on the table. Let’s look behind the hype
and see who are the winners and the losers here. It’s not hard to do.
The privatization of public education already
results in the transfer of tens of millions of dollars in public assets into
corporate hands without a discussion of compensation or, still more
fundamentally, whether society should allow public education to fall into
private, corporate hands.
Public schools originally arose in opposition to
the child labor of the 1830's, where the only children who attended school were
those whose families could afford it. What will happen when schools are
completely privatized and only the rich can afford to give their children an
education?
As high technology inevitably replaces jobs,
corporations that profit from human exploitation will simply no longer have a
need for an educated workforce, or even much of a workforce at all. Public
education must be guaranteed as a human right, just as are the rights to food,
shelter, clothing, health care, and culture.
Many people confuse the Apocalypse with
Armageddon. Armageddon is the final battle between good and evil, but it is the
end of the process. The Apocalypse arises first and plays a formative role in
the events that follow. The Apocalypse means, in Greek, “the raising of the
veil.” This is when fog lifts, the moment when things finally become clear,
indicating the path ahead.
As always in human affairs, it’s up to us and to
what we do. There can be no question that the world is being rapidly
transformed. That transformation is not the property of corporations. Let’s
make our future into our property—public property.
Sources
Tough Choices or Tough
Times. The New Commission on the Skills of the
American Workforce. http://skillscommission.org/executive.htm