Why I Am Afraid of the School Privatization Movement

I. Vouchers are a “Nice” Word for Segregation

Know how vouchers got started? After Brown v. the Board of Education, a bunch of southerners said, in effect “We would rather close our schools than have our white kids attend classes with _____s.” And so, Prince Edward Academy, Virginia shut down its public school system altogether. Other places created segregation academies white private schools which accepted tuition vouchers from the state so that all white children rich or poor could receive a quality education, while minorities were consigned to under funded public schools.


http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,660226540,00.html

In recent years, social justice supporters have begun to advocate vouchers as a way to get kids out of low performing public schools. This has lead them to become strange bedfellows with the Religious Right---whose goals are often opposed to social justice.



http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1083&context=facpub

If vouchers made better schools, I might be for them. However



The author of the above essay believes that vouchers fail because of the opposing desires of those who support them. Parents of underprivileged children want their kids to get a better education---and so they encourage the government to get involved to assure that schools are held accountable. The right wing wants to avoid regulations that interfere with their desire to discriminate---and so they resist government accountability. This means that vouchers end up satisfying no one.

II. Public School Privatization is Just Another Kind of Corporate Fascism

Right wingers in this country have not given up their quest to return to the days of the two tiered public school system. If parents do not want vouchers so that their kids can go to segregated, ideologically conservative schools then, by God, they will force them to attend those types of schools---

By radically altering our system of public education.

Milton Friedman wrote in Public Schools Make them Private



http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html

Note that faux-libertarian Friedman’s number one emphasis here is not in offering parents a choice. He wants to privatize “a major segment of the educational system”. In other words, he wants a corporate school system and a public school system. That last line “No conditions should be attached to vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment, to explore, and to innovate” is significant. Under Friedman’s scheme if a private company says “Kids learn better without minorities, disabled children and non-English speakers around” then they are allowed to discriminate---using public funds.

This is where the Friedman notion gets so dangerous. Once you start handing over public money to private interests it is easy to head down the rocky slope to corporate fascism, in which the needs of the few trump those of the masses and the needs of big business are the primary concern of the state.


I can almost hear the outrage. Milton Friedman a fascist? Well, I never---!

How many libertarians do you know would rush to embrace the Pinochet regime in Chile by talking about its “economic miracle” ?

http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/allposts/the-media-whitewash-of-fascist-economist-milton-friedman

Mussolini made the trains ran on time, but he was still a fascist and friend of big business. Privatizing public endeavors (like utilities, schools, the postal service) is one of the marks of the modern fascist state. Since the people elect and control the government, public concerns are subject to the wishes of the people. If control of these projects is placed into the hands of a few rich men, then the will of the people ceases to be of importance. The all mighty dollar becomes the only measure of success---and a few thousand people dropped into the ocean from helicopters becomes a necessary business expense.



III. A Secret Coup Against Our Schools

As we have seen in recent months, those who want to put our schools into the hands of big business have targetted teachers as the enemy. To read some of what has been written recently in the mainstream media, you would think that our teachers are culled from the dregs of society, Reagan's "welfare queens" who punch the clock but do absolutely nothing to earn their CEO level salaries. Teachers can not be trusted to educate our children. Only accountants at Fortune 500 companies can make those kinds of decisions.

http://teachersunionexposed.com/

Teachers Union Exposed is a high profile anti-teachers union website. Do not be fooled by their rhetoric, which claims to focus on education. This group is part of a larger anti-union group called Center for Union Facts . Here is SourceWatch on Center for Union Facts:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts



Half a million dollars opposing the Employee Free Choice Act? That’s a lot of money. Where did it all come from? The Center for Union Facts is not saying. However, here is more about front man, Rick Berman:



http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman

Tobacco lobbyist? Don’t you have to sell your soul to become one of those? Are we really supposed to believe that tobacco lobbyists give a flying fuck about our children’s education?

Among Berman’s claims to fame---attacks on ACORN because they had the temerity to advocate raising the minimum wage and on the Americans with Disabilities Act because it would cost big business money.

How nice to know that the economic forces attempting to privatize our public schools are using only the best Astroturfer.

IV. How Nice to Be a Beta!


Segregation, corporate fascism, coup--- these are loaded words. I use them on purpose. Try to imagine a day when some big company named SchoolKidsRUs runs all the schools in your state. They get a gazillion dollars a year in public funds to do whatever the hell they want. The only thing they have to do is keep the base of whichever party is in power happy. That means if Republicans have stolen another election and they run your state, SchoolKidsRUs will send all its money to schools where white Republicans send their kids. And power and privilege will enrich itself from general tax funds while the poor and working class (starting at the tender age of 5) are ground into the mud under the heel of Il Duce’s boot.

and this kind of stuff makes me even less likely to ever want kids.

And conservatives should be careful what they wish for: vouchers means the government will have more tools to regulate private schools, and what will they do when radical Muslims or Satanists start private schools of their own and start demanding voucher money?

They will ignore the heathen, because when the right wing makes a law, they make it clear it does not apply to WASPs :)

this is true. What happened in health care in the 90's is happening in education. I am a school nurse and my "low performing school" was reconstituted into an internal charter (run by the school district). We will start the middle school an hour early. This presents a hardship to parents with young kids in elementary school and commuting teachers with children. We have a longer day and when we get out now-we are put into rush hour traffic. Teachers will have less time with their families and kids will get home later, and God help them if they have after school activities. They will have Saturday tutorials also and they are promising teachers we will no have to do that. Next year we may extend the school year. Oh Joy. But maybe we won't have to worry about that because they got rid of 80% of our experienced teachers. Most of the teacher's kids that were motivated (remember these are middle school teens) passed the all important TAKS test. Because our salaries are public record, I know for a fact that all the teachers that were laid off were the teachers that made the higher salary- our more experienced staff. Now these teacher have taught for years had turned down better and easier jobs to teach in the roughest inner city neighborhoods. Their idea of a better teacher? A Teach for America new graduate without teaching certifications. It will take another $20,000 to half way bring them up to speed and they tend to quit within 2 years. But hey, they don't cost that much.:eyes:

As I am a Nurse and I am 'office', I was spared but many Nurses have left the district-you can get 20,000-30,000 a year more in the medical center without all the bullshit hassles. We are over 26 Nurses short and still counting. I have no idea on Teachers because they are hiding THAT number but it is a lot. And we have lost over 35 principals. Now that number may catch your eye. They made the teachers responsible for the students test scores. You can get fired if they don't pass. Now they don't test the kids at the beginning but by damn, they better be at grade level and pass TAKS AND show 'growth' or the teacher get a bad eval and is fired. Well, there are two things that overlooks: the kids that are so far behind to begin with (2 grade level but the teacher manages to get this 4th grader up to beginning 4th and he doesn't pass TAKS) or the teacher kids test and consistently pass TAKS at 97% (not enough growth :eyes:) And the principals are accountable for the schools or they get fired. Now why would anyone take on a rough school. If you don't turn it around in three years-you are fired and may loose your certification. They tried to reassign some of these good principals to these under preforming schools and most of these principals left to suburban districts rather than put their job and career at risk.

I have never seen moral so low and people so disgusted. There is such an anti-intellectual bias here to begin with and to denigrate teachers doesn't help. This is nothing more than a union busting, corporate overtaking of education. I don't mind competing with charter school-but on a level playing field. The big elephant in the room-with all these years of reform......why do the test scores keep declining. We have become all about teaching to the test and not educating (drill to kill). Kids are bored and we are blaming the teachers. Each reform means education gets less funding and we wonder why our kids fall behind. I am very close to retiring and I thank God for that but I feel sorry for the new teachers.

...the best students and leaving the public schools with responsibility for all special-needs kids. It's a travesty.

Mr. Taylor's post makes an excellent case against privatization of our schools.

I think they are creepy.

Bingo. Spot on. Well-written, too. Thanks! You covered this topic very well. The whole school choice thing is a sham, a cover-up for killing off public education, unions, and secular education. Vouchers are BS designed to fool parents. No more, no less.

One thing you didn't mention (unless I messed it) is that charter / Christian / other BS schools make take kids by lottery (MAYBE), but they don't have to KEEP them. Add to this the unwillingness and inability of most of these BS schools to properly teach children with disabilities. Kids with mental retardation (not a pejorative word, but a clinical diagnosis) have a right to a decent education, too. No matter how low their abilities may be, they have a right to a FAPE (a Free, Appropriate Public Education) just like everybody else. They might accidentally accept a child with severe mental retardation, but they're not capable of teaching that child. They have neither the money nor the facilities to do so. The child ends up being expelled for some other reason, and ends up back in public schools.

If the wingnuts had their way, charters and anything other BS that calls itself a school would get lots and lots of voucher money. Only remaining funds would go to public schools, which would be left with only the most difficult kids to teach. They'd have less money (fewer kids!) and would eventually have to close. Voila! No more public education.

I hope that made sense. I know what I meant...

I live in the Bible Belt, and in the pit of my stomach, I know what school privatization would mean for my family. My kids would end up going to a public school run by evangelicals, with creationism taught instead of science, and abstinence taught instead of sex ed, etc. Both of these are already watered down as it is, but at least they are taught -- or at least they were when I was in school in the late 80s-early 90s (my kids are too young, so I don't know for certain).

We do not have charter schools here. Almost all of the upper middle class evangelical Christians I know either homeschool or send their kids to a private Christian school (there are MANY around these parts). My niece attended one such school. Her folks pulled her out around 4th grade because they felt the science curriculum was lacking. Ha, imagine that! My neighbors are homeschoolers, and their homeschooling group planned a trip to the Creation Museum as a SCIENCE field trip. I wish I were joking. If we think the country is polarized now, imagine 20-30 years from now, when all of these kids who have spent their entire childhood in an insular, conservative Christian environment are adults.

I love the public school my kids attend, and I am well aware that right wingers could easily rig tests to make any school "fail" if it suited their corporate interests. I have no doubt that most people here, especially the poor to lower middle class Christians who can't afford private school/homeschooling, would welcome a Christian-run public school with open arms.

People with money intentionally move to areas with good school systems and those who can't afford the expensive locales have to send their kids too crappy schools. We have public school segregation based on income already.

Especially since middle and upper-class parents are already more motivated to give their kids a good education in the first place, and will make sure that even in a "worse" school the kids have access to GATE programs, keep up with the homework, and get the best teachers. In short, that they make the most of the educational opportunities available to them.

.... not an ally in the fight to education properly *all* our kids. And that includes those who are working to establish more charter/alternative schools, vouchers, etc.

Why should we not exist? We just graduated 77 students this spring who would not have graduated from high school if we hadn't been there for them. Students kicked out of the public high schools in the area for various reasons, students with chronic health problems that needed our particular format that takes special needs into account, students with severe learning disabilities who weren't getting helped enough in the public high school that didn't want to deal with them. Tell me why our school, administered by the local school district, should not exist.

No different than arts schools and trade schools or any other "magnet" (<---descriptive, not definitive) school.

I'm glad those 77 kids made it to cap and gown day. Congrats to you for helping with that.

Why could it not have been done as a public school?

We used to be entirely run by the local public school district as the bastard child of the high school. Our principal and a few others got the idea that we could be an independent charter run by the school district (cheaper for them, let us rename the school without the word "alternative" in it and have an independent board that was concerned only about our needs, not the entire district's, etc.), so we incorporated that way a few years back.

Most alternative high schools that are part of the local school district have real problems, administratively. Why spend money on the outcasts? For a few years, they had us in the portables at the high school, forgetting to turn on the heat or put in the book orders and the teachers refusing to eat with the alt. ed. teachers, etc. (before my time, but I've heard many stories). The school district didn't want to spend the money needed to have enough teachers, enough classrooms, enough resources, but being a mostly independent charter gives us that money and freedom.

The reality is, with the pressure on test scores, it's in the public schools' best interests to kick low-scoring students out for whatever reason to up their average scores. Those kids still need a chance to graduate, and that's why we exist. We take those students in, give them the better environment they need (smaller classes, more individualized instruction, solid rules with solid consequences, lots of emotional support, etc.), and we get them to graduate.

We also take the outcasts: we have more LBGT students, population-wise, than the local high school. Our school is safer for them as well as the all the others that just don't fit in at the local high schools.

I'm not saying you're in favor of that. I'm saying it sorta seems like it could be that.

I understand the lack of administrative support and the "taxpayers'" reluctance to support "not normal" kids. but if this were the rule, the law, then it would have to be done. I think supporting these semi, sorta, almost but not quite private schools for this reason opens up the practice to any old made up (read "racial bias") reason.

It does smack of that, but at least we get the kids to graduate, rather than put them out on the streets without a diploma.

We're known for taking anyone, regardless of need, socioeconomic background, etc. Last semester, we had a six page waiting list. We're at the point where we could really expand and become a good-sized high school in our own right or stay the same but really restrict our numbers to keep it smaller (where it's been working really well).

It's a catch-22: if we didn't exist, those kids would be out on their own without diplomas, as they would get kicked out whether we exist or not; since we do exist, there is a bit of a "separate but equal" situation going on. Most of our students, though, say they feel like our school is better than their old school, feel safer at our school, and are more successful. I'd say, for most of our students, we're separate but better. ;)

She works as a 4th-5th grade teacher at a public charter school. This school gets less state money then the traditional public school across the street, has a much higher percentage of special needs students than the school across the street, has higher STAR test results then the school across the street, and the teachers gets paid considerably less than the teachers at the school across the street. Oh, and the charter schools charter is held by the local school district, the same one that runs the school across the street.

This is not a corporation, or some private for-profit company. These are local teachers and parents who are doing something to make a difference.

All of the schools teachers are state certified. My wife is the biggest ally in the fight to educate our kids that I know. Your ignorant statement is a slap in the face. Like most broad-brush statements, yours fails miserably when confronted with real life.

both of the examples of charter schools in this thread seem to defy the norm, which happens to be less special needs and English language learners than traditional public schools within the same community.

they're working against positive reforms that will make all schools better and stronger, and make kids more successful.

Some number of non-public charter schools have given good public charter schools an undeserved bad name, apparently.

It's really, really wrong and this makes these critics unwitting accomplices in preventing positive change from happening.

How? By broadbrushing and trying to shut down charters, they are trying to shut down schools that offer alternatives to students that larger district schools cannot, or will not quickly enough. Some of the successful elements of charters are slowly being adopted by traditional schools, and this is a good thing that would be less likely to happen if there weren't the alternatives.

I'm opposed to corporate owned enterprises that use the "charter" approach and that rake in profits, hire unqualified teachers, or otherwise weaken the system. It's just that I haven't run into any of these and I work with a variety of schools for a living, every damned day!

I want to personally thank you for your post and thank your wife for her service.

And, unlike many who speak out on the topic, I am a union employee for a county office of education and I work with public charters and local school district schools, and I support both models.

:patriot:

Neither are these parents who are organizing and fighting charter school take overs of their community schools.

http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com/2010/06/harlem-success-academy-vs-mosiac-prep.html

Neither are the people who are documenting charter school abuses.

http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/

Neither is the foremost educational historian in the U.S., Diane Ravitch and her respected colleague and educator Deborah Meier.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/

Neither is Chief of Staff Rahm Emmmanuel

"In a Thursday interview, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel argued that rather than recoiling against Obama, business leaders should be grateful for his support on at least a half-dozen counts: his advocacy of greater international trade and education reform open markets despite union skepticism;"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39495.html

Arne Duncan said it would be very hard for a state to win Race to the top money if it has a cap on charters. Obama said he would veto the bill to save teachers jobs if there was any cut in Race to the Top.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/06/02/duncan-runs-reform-contest-hoards-education-money-while-300000-teachers-face-layoffs/


You see if you look into things, it is not confusing at all. Education reform opens new markets to business. We should be investing in our public schools and the communities which they reside instead of privatizing education.

I'm speaking from experience and I've often admitted that I'm unfamiliar with what goes on in other states.

I don't doubt that there are problems with some non-public and some public-charters, just as there are with traditional schools.

But the constant railing against ALL charter schools is misplaced energy that isn't really helping.

As a white southerner born in the 60s I grew up very aware that "christian" school was code for "we're white and we like to keep it that way." Wwhen all the "voucher" and "choice" talk entered the lexicon in the 80s, and I was in my 20s, that just added another layer of segregation with a wink and a smile. It was one of my first clues I used to unravel the Orwellian doublespeak the Repubs have had to resort to to talk to their base. Today, we call it dog whistling.

My mother, a public school 9th grade algebra teacher for 20 years, would be appalled at the attack on teachers and public education. She believed that everyone, regardless of their background and needs, deserved the same excellent education and to achieve all of which they were capable.

Thanks for laying it all out so well. I am extremely alarmed when I hear Democrats and various stripes of liberals say "what's wrong with 'choice' ". Because they don't really understand what they are supporting, that's why.

First thing charter schools will do is to BORROW money to recondition the buildings and cover other setup costs.

Then the public will find charter schools DO NOT teach better.

Then the public schools will inherit the debt of the failed charter schools.

Then, finally, public schools will be even less funded, producing only kids for the military and the banks will collect "their" money.

there is no denying that our public school system is failing in a lot of areas.

Public schools should be more evenly funded and they should put more money into practical education - financial management, trades, and basic personal care.

Most private schools, at least in my area (New England) are in the Catholic system and are honestly pretty subpar, especially at the lower grade levels.

I am glad to say that I am done with the primary education system.
Seeing what is to become of it now, I would not want to be involved.

That is the battle cry of the corporatists that own this government lock, stock and barrel..with very few exceptions.

Like almost everything else in this country it has fallen victim to the selfish, the greedy and the ignorant.
And there is no small amount of union busting involved in this attempt to privatize everything in view, from education to prisons.

This will no longer be democracy, a meritocracy or even a democratic republic. The goal of the corporate taskmaster is a
profitocracy. If it does not put money into the pockets of private business, it is useless, and should be condemned.

Anything and anyone that disagrees with that basic principle is to be dishonored, disputed, discarded, and just plain dissed!

Teachers and their unions are way up there on that "enemies" list.

Anyone who is not defending teachers, and thinks their job will be immune from such "dissing", should pay very close attention to the words of Pastor Neimoller:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

I went to a suburban well-functioning public high school. The community was adamantly opposed to vouchers for one main reason: they didn't want a bunch of poor and minority students coming into our school.

Not the most progressive stance, but just so everyone knows, not all opponents of vouchers are bleeding heart liberals either.

It's as simple as that. The Aristocracy is closing up shop and taking back the few crumbs they let us have during The Age of Cheap Oil.

They pretty much have all their pieces in place. The only "revolution" this nation is capable of having, probably now and until it happens, is something akin to the 1933 "revolution" in Germany.

It's waaaaaaay too far gone now.

And the racial demographics are kept to reflect the community?

That's what Chicago public charter schools do.

You get in on a lottery basis, with the only preference given to siblings.

No cherry picking; the public charter my wife teaches at has a higher percentage of special needs kids than does the traditional public school across the street. Demographics are identical otherwise. It works really well. The waiting list for the charter is about the same as the school population: 600+

Unfortunately, voucher only work as well as the estimate of the cost of training a robot. Humans are not Robots, no matter how hard the Corporations would like to make us think that.

We are organic machines that have distinct cycles of productivity vs rejuvenation. We heal, but it usually takes weeks to heal a bad cut, no? Yet our medical system will sew it up with little more care than a mechanic fixing an alternator.

OK you've spent your voucher fixing the alternator, but the mechanic installed it incorrectly, and it failed again. No voucher, tough titty folks, game over, unless you can fork over extra cash.

That's the voucher charade in a nutshell.. Don't fall for it. Kids are not Robots.

Diverting the money into profits makes no sense. We saw what it did to health care and it will do the same for education.

There are a couple of posters who have linked to Teachers' Union Exposed and Center For Union Facts to support their teacher bashing here. I hope people will become familiar with these verminous "sources" and report them if you see someone trying to pass off RW astroturf as solid data.

I watch it happen in schools frequently. As the schools cut back funds and dump on teachers more with larger classes and more test prep, some parents who know better start to complain. If enough of them were to complain, the district and the state might have to address the issues. Instead, they let a precious few into a school that those parents see as "special" and privileged. They stop complaining. They think their kids are taken care of so they can ignore the problems that the test-driven curriculum and mania creates for the other 99% of the children. In most cases they are afraid to complain anymore because they are worried their their kids might not get to be special any more. At the very least, they no longer are involved in school improvement.

It's another win for the privatizers who have effectively silenced parents who might be a problem. They can then go about their long range goals as described in the OP.