By Tamara
So my dad asked me the other day what on earth would be the
benefit of dismantling the Department of Education. His question was prompted
by an article he recently came across. My response was,” have you heard of X,
Y, Z testing/educational publishing companies?”
If we did away with the Department of Education and public
schooling as we know it, these companies as well as private on-line schools are
poised to make bank. Along with their politically connected supporters (note I
did not single out a particular party-gains will be on both sides of the
aisle).
The New York Times not too long ago chronicled the gaffe
about a prompt regarding a pineapple on state exams. The testing company
responsible for the item in question holds the sole contract for standardized tests
not only for New York City public schools, but the entire state of Texas.
Apparently anti-trust laws don’t apply when annual testing has been legislate-
thank you NCLB.
The fact is privatization of our education system is a very
real possibility. Either through the dismantling of federal departments or the
lure of click-for-credit on-line programs. The question is, how is public
education going to respond and deal with this reality? And will our children
benefit or suffer from the outcome of the debate?
Thank you Kristen.
You are right: private business has always made profit from public education in a variety of ways. Students are always going to need desks. It has been interesting, given my district’s close proximity to Idaho, to observe what that state has been doing in regard to contracting with a single company for all of its digital learning. With Idaho’s superindentent pushing for half of all courses offered to be on-line, the teachers there are questioning if they are going to be on the state’s payroll or this comput company’s. That is where we enter the territory of needing to ask if we are still offering a public education.
I have mixed feelings: partnerships with private business often leverages our resources, provides opportunities outside the scope of the school house. but I worry the taxpayers are often left out of the loop and that’s is where I also would like to see more local involvement and local decision making. I fear you are right though-they system feels it has become too large for local ownership.
An like you, I would like to have more options for my childrens’ education than are currently available. Charters could provide that other option. Right now though I would like to see our resources going toward streamlining and strengthening our public system to the point I won’t feel the need to seek other options.
I always enjoy your posts, Tamara.
I worry that there’s a false – and distracting – dichotomy being set up between public education and private business.
There has always been a profit made off of public education. Even our union – WEA – has a long, long staff list of people whose whole careers are supported by public education, even though they aren’t (and some have never been) in the classroom. Textbook publishers, furniture makers, software designers, Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Ticonderoga, whiteboard manufacturers, even the food industry all ride piggy back on tax money meant to educate kids. And in some form or another, public education has always supported private businesses. In my previous classroom about 90% of the old wooden chairs had a lovely, proud label from the Northwest Chair Company in Tacoma, Washington. Thousands of those chairs must have been bought. Was it a deal struck between friends? Was it a deal that brought a promise of a campaign contribution? I don’t know. And I don’t really care, because they’re great chairs and chairs had to be bought somewhere.
Those businesses and people who are currently supported by the big money that is public education would like to maintain that situation. Others would like to get in on it. If it’s a competition, it’s one that has always been there.
I believe in the department of education. I believe in a mix of elected and hired oversight for our schools. I believe in a mix of elected and hired oversight for our union – though it sometimes troubles me that a WEA public relations staff member earns more that twice what I do.
I would like to see more decisions made locally, though, and feel what’s happening in D.C. and Olympia is pretty out of touch with what my students or daughters need. I feel like public education has become like Rome in its final days – too big, too populated, too disconnected. Those who govern are starting to outnumber those they govern. Washington’s OSPI is a perfect example of this, as is my district.
The current charter initiative seems to have fed the fear of schools being run by private organizations, but sometimes I wonder if a CMO, like KIPP, is any more eager to be sustained by tax dollars than my own district, or any less worthy.
Hi Tamara,
You make some good points here! Yes, sometimes the federal Department of Education (and the associated contractors) seems like a distant bureacracy working at 30,000 feet far removed from the reality of classroom learning. However, it is this Department of Education that is helping to keep the “public” in our public education system–without it, as you say, the private for-profit companies would be well-positioned for control of our school systems.