by David Safier
I've become increasingly convinced we're on the cusp of the most significant educational change we've seen in decades, maybe since the 1920s when child labor laws and compulsory education laws combined to create an explosion in high school attendance and gave birth to the modern high school.
For good or ill, K-12 education is going through a major transformation. Charter schools are moving from their experimental infancy into adolescence, and their numbers are increasing rapidly. "Market based education," or "free market education" or "privatization of education" — whatever you want to call it — is on the rise, both with charters and with for-profit education corporations taking over the control of some public schools.
Take a look at Los Angeles.
Then look at the $54 million flowing into Arizona from the feds to expand charter school education, as well as national directives to fire the staffs of failing schools and start over, possibly as traditional public schools, possibly as public/private hybrids.
Obama and his Ed Sec Arne Duncan are riding a wave that's been moving toward shore since the 1980s when the Reagan administration, then the first Bush administration declared public schools a failure and promoted vouchers as the answer to our educational woes. The movement went underground during the Clinton years, then resurfaced with a vengeance under the second Bush administration. No Child Left Behind was created as a way to humiliate public schools, using test scores to expose their weaknesses, while government money was being pumped into organizations promoting privatization. That part of the plan was successful — schools' failures were spotlighted and the privatization movement grew — but the next part, showing that charters and private schools outperformed traditional schools, didn't work out so well. Studies by Bush's Dept of Ed and others showed no appreciable difference in student achievement between traditional public schools, charters and private schools.
In comes Obama who wants change, and Arne Duncan who has a missionary's zeal when it comes to improving education. Duncan's motto seems to be, "If it's not working, throw it out and start over." He's nothing if not bold in his willingness to change the educational landscape. Who knows what the results will be? Some of the new programs might reap educational rewards for students, while others might open government funded education to sleazy operators who combine careless education with financial corruption the likes of which we've only seen in a few large cities.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to maintain an air of neutrality in this post because, honestly, I don't think what's happening is either all good or all bad. Change is inevitable, folks. It's going to happen. It's already happening. And let's be honest, the educational status quo, especially when it comes schools serving our least advantaged children, is not something we should protect. The important thing right now is to watch what's going on with a critical eye, pointing out successes, failures and abuses and trying to direct the change toward the best possible outcomes.
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At the heart of this issue is a simple question: what is a school? In developing nations, a school is a simple building where children sit on a dirt floor. You may have noticed that I did not include a teacher in this defintion. Teacher qualifications very greatly around the world. In the US, we expect our teachers to possess a teaching certificate, and to be highly qualified (what ever that means) in their area of instruction.
If we are going to “fix” public education we need to start by answering the first question. How big should a school be? What kinds of facilities should they have? Do they have to be distinct buildings of a particular style, or can they be part of a larger public building like a mall or shopping center?
But schools aren’t just about buildings, they’re about people. We also need to decide who needs to be in our schools. Does a school need a nurse, a librarian, a counselor, a PE teacher, an Office Manager, a Principal?
I see Charter Schools as small marginal experiments that probe these questions. However, the one weekness of this style of experimentation is that it assumes a continuous (if not declining) level of financial support for education. Within this experimentation we don’t see people attempting to spend more on education to see if that works.
No, I don’t know more than Duncan. I just sit behind my MacBook and ruminate. Ask me what to do on a national scale, and I’m clueless. That’s why I spent my whole educational career in the classroom trying my damndest to give something to the students sitting in front of me instead of aspiring to administration. It’s much easier to be me, a critical spectator, than Duncan and Obama who are charged with the task of improving the nation’s education.
As Bob Dylan once said, “Don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin.” The success or failure of their efforts will be in the execution of their plans. I’m hoping for the best — or maybe I should say, for the better. They’re at the very beginning of this journey, and it’s going to take a lot of twists and turns in the next few years.
My problem is that David knows more about Public Education than this idiot Duncan who destroyed Chicagos School Systems and has the Nations worst drop-out rate; but I Nobama180 appointed him as the Van Jones of Education!
Thanks, Jack. Posts like this are one of the reasons I enjoy having a forum, to try and present the larger picture from my perspective.
Reply to Mariana Spier,
You’re right. That didn’t sound the way I meant it to.
I mean that I look at the RSS feeds to catch the articles – so I can read them to learn more about issues (i.e. education in this state) from what I believe to be a reliable informative source.
I’m not into party worship. As a Green, I’ve found no one party really “hitting it”, but that’s O.K., I look for common ground on the issues.
Jack, your name is linked to your FB account, we have a couple of common FB friends. My first guess was you are a reasonable libertarian, but your choice of words makes me wonder. Are you “watching” this blog?
Money coming from the feds has something to do with the very successful charter schools in NYC (I think). Arizona is a whole different story but , somehow, nobody seems to notice -other then David Safier-. I’m not against charter schools, but since I pay for their mere existence, I want to know how they operate and what they do.
The problem -as I see it- is that we look at schools the same way we look at a business enterprise. We let school districts grow big so they can “manage” costs,and we forget we cannot manage /teach kids in batches of 80 000 (or so) a pop. Education is a social investment and cannot/shouldn’t be measured by business standards.
For what it’s worth. Posts like these are the main reason why I keep watching this blog.
Rarely neutral and hopefully civil more often than not, I will just add that so-call privatized (charter) schools can produce as poor results as any government school. The problem is the government calls the shots in both situations and government educational edicts (and general oversight or lack of same) haven’t produced results the public expects from them.
Congratulations on the neutral post.
Also, I love the new comment system.