Online at: http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/4462/1/225/

Privatized Schools Don't Make the Grade

By Lawrence Albright

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2006 – print

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11-27-06, 12:00 pm

A new paradigm has emerged in the field of education that coincides with the ascendancy of the political ultra-right. Elementary and secondary schools can and should be run for profit, right-wing ideologues insist, and, moreover, this profit motivation can provide the cure for all that ails the system of public education.

There is nothing new, of course, in the concept of private schools. At the high school level, parochial schools have seemingly been around forever while in higher education private colleges and universities are an accepted part of the education scene. In the case of parochial schools, the combination of traditional curriculum with religious education placed them outside the public school realm due to the constitutional separation of church and state. In higher education, meanwhile, institutions like Harvard and Yale successfully promoted the concept of themselves as colleges by and for the elite.

One of the individuals at the forefront of this effort is entrepreneur Chris Whittle, the chief executive officer of Edison Schools. Whittle started his efforts with the Edison School in New York and has subsequently expanded into areas like Philadelphia and Detroit. Whittle's philosophy dovetails nicely with the standard conservative and ultra-right attacks on public education over the past three or four decades.

Whittle's educational model, promoted through the Edison Project, is that public schools must remain public to a degree, but should be economically organized along profit lines so that they are made more efficient. But what are the facts?

Although public education conceptually dates back to ancient Greece and the first public school in the American colonies was established in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1643, the modern conception of public education as it exists in the early 21st century is a relatively recent phenomenon.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the US Supreme Court handed down a now infamous decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The Supreme Court found that segregated school facilities were lawful, provided the education afforded to people of color was essentially similar to the education provided to whites. This came to be referred to as the "separate but equal" doctrine and formed the basis for institutionalized racism in the Jim Crow South.

Fifty-eight years later, this doctrine was overturned by the Supreme Court in its decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote an argument that both devastated the "separate but equal" fallacy and which remains relevant for today's discussion of public education:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

Of course, the Supreme Court's decision in the Brown case did not bring an immediate end to segregation in public education. The long-standing practice of segregation in housing in areas throughout the United States, a practice which was generally lawful until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, combined with the manner in which school districts were established, perpetuated segregation in education outside of the South. A court-ordered decision to integrate schools in Boston through busing in the early 1970's saw numerous ugly incidents of racism and racial violence, for example, in areas of South Boston and Charlestown.

As a result of the victories attained by the civil rights movement, aided by progressive legislation at both the national and local levels alongside some very wise judicial decisions, public education today is widely available and is multiethnic, multiracial and multilingual in composition.

While the public education system is far from perfect, it is clear that gains have been made during the preceding five decades. Why, then, have the conservative and ultra-right forces made public education a prominent target for attack during at least half of those years? And why have those same forces promoted the use of school vouchers and, more recently, welcomed the approach advanced by Chris Whittle?

To begin, while the ultra-right is big on discussions of things like classroom size and classroom performance, they are not desirous of a discussion of class itself. While, for most of us, there is no doubt that education is very much an issue of class, the notion of the US as a classless society has a long history. For example, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, who dissented from the court's decision in that case, wrote, "But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens."

The concept of classlessness, as absurd as it may seem in real life, has the advantage as a construct of fitting nicely the myth of what has become known as "the American dream." In its essence, above and beyond the oft-repeated cliché that "anyone can become wealthy," the "American dream" myth postulates that the ultimate dream and goal of the working class is to become wealthy enough to no longer have to work. And a final corollary: the leaders of the US government do not take into account or reflect class interests.

If one can agree that the myth of the so-called "American dream" is just that, and that the ultra-right does represent a specific class in our society, then it must be seen that their educational initiatives reflect their class interests.

Let's take, for example, the much ballyhooed ultra-right promotion of school vouchers. School vouchers are not a new concept, although the conservative and ultra-right forces would like to take the credit. Adam Smith proposed that the state provide money directly to parents for the education of their children in his 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations. In 1873, Maine developed a school voucher program so students could attend private schools (the majority of schools were private in the 19th century).

In its more recent incarnation, the ultra-right advocates school vouchers as a panacea to what it has identified as deficiencies in public education. In an obvious attempt to appeal to what it perceives as its religious and political base, the ultra-right wants school vouchers to be used for parochial schools, as well as toward non-parochial private school tuition. Scholarship programs have been set up in several states to serve similar purposes.

But the ultra-right sees another advantage in the promotion of school vouchers beyond the appeal to its base. Parochial and private schools are not organized. In the public school systems, teachers are organized primarily into one of two labor unions: the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA). The ultra right would love to break these unions, and by declaring public education a poor second to private models of learning they try to paint unionized teachers with a tarred brush.

The current policy on funding public schools based on standardized test scores must be seen as part and parcel of this overall anti-union drive. If a school performs poorly on the exams, then who can be blamed other than the teachers? If a school gets a "failing" grade from the state, it must be the fault of the teachers. It's the union.

The union makes it impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. And how dare those teachers want more money, since they only work nine months of the year. Such statements generally come from ultra-right political viewpoints, or individuals who have never taught in a classroom, or from people who haven't set foot in a classroom since they left school themselves. Or all three.

Nowhere mentioned by these critics is that economic factors have a great impact on educational performance; of the household where someone is working two or more minimum-wage jobs just to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads, or the household where the employers have classified them as "part-time" at 36 hours per week to avoid health insurance. Nor do these critics mention that nutrition has a vital role in educational performance. And, of course, alcohol and drug abuse have ravaged many families.

The ultra-right would rather you also didn't ask about the millions of dollars being paid to private entities to develop state standardized tests. And ever since former Vice President Dan Quayle misspelled "potato," none of these ultra-right politicians would be caught dead taking one of their fourth or tenth grade exams.

As if that were not enough, one more thing the ultra-right doesn't want publicized is that private schools are normally exempt from state education requirements for teacher certification in the subject areas they teach. And while some private schools do require their teachers to be screened for criminal backgrounds and sex offenses as a matter of liability, it is optional for them as opposed to mandatory in public schools. Private and parochial schools are also exempted from many federal education regulations, including civil rights.

Under the guise of faith-based initiatives, increasing educational opportunities through vouchers and improving educational performance, the ultra-right is once again cynically, but not without some skill, trying to turn back the clock on every gain made by progressives in education. It is, after all, much easier to promote the idea that what is to blame is teachers' and teachers unions rather than a social and economic system that has overburdened working families to the breaking point.

In his film, The American President, writer Aaron Sorkin has his fictional president say, of his ultra-right opponent, that he is interested in two things, "having you be afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it," rather than providing solutions to the problems.

It is against this backdrop that Chris Whittle's Edison schools project must be seen. Whittle has a somewhat checkered record as an entrepreneur, and in keeping with that breed of individual has sometimes taken tremendous risks. But his notion that schools can be run by school districts on a for-profit basis seems attractive to some given that federal funding for education has failed to keep place with inflation.

Whittle says that the United States knows how to run great schools, but not a great school district. He has been, to date, careful not to demand that his brand of school separate itself from the school districts in which they operate – greater community control of public schools was one of the victories that emerged from the 1960's and early 1970's.

But then again, he may not need to demand a separation. While Whittle's pitch has been that his goal in running a for-profit educational system is to reduce taxes, a long-standing mantra of the ultra-right, the NEA clearly saw the ramifications of for-profit education and school vouchers as targeting community control by school districts.

These forces, combined with support services contracting, amount to an attempted private sector takeover of the entire system of public education. If these forces were allowed to continue unabated, one could imagine a system of public education where nearly all administrative, teaching, support, and even cultural functions would be controlled by private companies, reducing the role of elected school boards to glorified contract administrators,

said an NEA statement on privatization.

But an interesting thing happened in the years since Edison was established in 1992 and Whittle claimed public schools could be run on a for-profit basis. The interesting thing that happened is that the profit did not. An article in the public education advocacy magazine Rethinking Schools in 2002 revealed that

Throughout its history, Edison has projected profits in the near future – not so soon as to get caught empty-handed, but soon enough to soothe worried investors. And as the target date for profitability approaches, the date keeps shifting. Between 1996 and 2001, Edison executives changed their predictions on when their company would turn a profit five times, ranging from 1998 to 2005. The company has yet to report a profit.

Indeed, Edison's stock prices plummeted and an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was critical of its accounting practices. One of Edison's schools in Boston, the Rennaissance Charter School, severed its ties with Edison in 2002, three years before the expiration of its contract.

As for the contention that private or charter schools provide a better education for their students than traditional public education, a study by the National Assessment Governing Board in 2004 on charter school performance found:

Charter schools that were part of the local school district had significantly higher scores than charter schools that served as their own district.
Students taught by certified teachers had roughly comparable scores whether they attended charter schools or traditional public schools, but the scores of students taught by uncertified teachers in charter schools were significantly lower than those of charter school students with certified teachers.
Students taught by teachers with at least five years' experience outperformed students with less experienced teachers, regardless of the type of school attended, but charter school students with inexperienced teachers did significantly worse than students in traditional public schools with less experienced teachers. (The impact of this finding is compounded by the fact that charter schools are twice as likely as traditional public schools to employ inexperienced teachers.)

In a study that followed North Carolina students for several years, professors Robert Bifulco and Helen Ladd found that students in charter schools actually made considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in traditional public schools, according to the National Education Association.

In the last analysis, whether Chris Whittle succeeds or fails with the Edison Schools initiatives is of little consequence, since the ultra-right sees him and his efforts as simply one wedge to break apart public education. There are other private contractors waiting in the wings. And the battle that must be waged to protect public education is not against Chris Whittle personally, but against the ultra-right.

At the height of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, student leader Mario Savio spoke of the university as representing autocracy and viewing students as raw material to be used by corporations, which he opposed.

Today, the ultra-right seeks to privatize education and return education to the days when inequality was the norm. This is very much a political issue that reflects both their class interests and class stand. And if we're going to point the fickle finger of blame for any deficits in public education, then let's point it at a socioeconomic system that forces parents to make choices to spend more time with their children or have money to pay the bills. Let's blame a system that makes it possible for an employer not to provide health care insurance or in which the costs of living are increasing while real income is decreasing, and where a family sometimes chooses between poor nutrition or no nutrition at all. Let's point to the system where we put both our youth and our seniors at risk.

The ultra-right will continue to hammer against public education in the absence of a concerted struggle against them. Private education is to them the ultimate provider of knowledge. After all, our current president benefited from private schools. It was the best C average money could buy.

--Reach Lawrence Albright at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net