1 September 2004
Bernadette Medige
Privatization of Public Education, part IV: The Conservative Agenda
On August 17th the New York Times reported that traditional public schools significantly outperformed charter schools in a national study. The American Federation of Teachers pored over the 2003 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in math and reading and found that charter schools lagged behind traditional public schools, and specifically when scores of similar students were compared. In other words, the charter school rhetoric that charter schools score poorly due to taking on high-risk students was debunked. Still, the pro-charter response ignored this detail and stuck to this rhetoric. Meanwhile the government attempted to delay these results while concocting their own spin. It should be noted that the AFT does not oppose charter schools.The pro-charter Buffalo News did not carry the story, but five days later ran an editorial calling for the continuation of the charter school “experiment” despite this “sobering” study. Buffalo Report did post a link to the New York Times article, which is no longer available, so here’s a link to AFT’s full press release, “First-Ever NAEP Charter School Results Repeatedly Delayed”, and a link to their full report.
The News said that New York’s charters are too new and that poor performance reflects the effects of poor public schooling prior to children moving to charter schools. This cannot be said of other states. Minnesota was the first state to pass charter school legislation in 1991 and test scores there are still lagging, reports the Star Tribune. Thirteen years is enough for a kid to have graduated from high school after entering a charter school in kindergarten. How much time is enough? Experiments begin small, methodology and results are published and only success is expanded upon. When an “experiment” needs to be replicated in 40 states with inconclusive results we need to start recognizing this as part of a broader political agenda, not an experiment.
What is this agenda? I believe the “reform" here is political and economic, not educational. The goal is to privatize and deregulate public education, which many conservatives view as just another expensive social program. Business interests see a huge market there, given that education is the largest portion of most cities’ budgets, and want a slice of the pie.There is a long history of corporations influencing public policy and profiting off education. In “Reading Between the Lines”, Stephen Metcalf gives a disturbing glimpse of the relationship between the Bush and McGraw-Hill that reads like Cheney and Halliburton. This article, reprinted from The Nation, describes how the textbook publishing industry is having a field day inventing demand for “scientifically proven” curricula, complete with testing and scoring contracts, while swapping personnel with Bush’s education department. These cookie cutter curricula make teacher credentials irrelevant, further discrediting the “terrorist” teachers and driving down their salaries. Arizona, the state with the most charter schools, is trying to fill a perceived shortage of teachers by making it easier to become one. But supply isn't the problem. Arizona has 11,000 teachers that choose not to teach due to low pay. The profit-motivated private sector can manipulate curricula and testing mechanisms to appear successful, then bankroll the politicians. Politicians appear to be doing something about education, allowing them to avoid addressing (and funding) the larger social problems that are the real barriers to learning.
Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act rewards charter states with additional money while making impossible demands on public schools, fueling demand for charter schools by trashing public schools. He has been rewarded with hefty campaign contributions from educational management organizations, which in turn profit by managing charter schools. Once we get used to dollar signs following children around and non-democratic oversight of education, we will become desensitized to the idea of vouchers. When the public schools are so strangled (forced to close) under the punitive NCLB, and when charters feel similarly constrained by dependence on test scores to compete, demand for vouchers will increase, and charter schools will provide a base of voucher-ready schools. It is the paradox of charter schools that they both offer relief from and lend support to this agenda. They are the proverbial foot in the door.
It is no accident that conservatives have couched this agenda in words that appeal to the left, such as “choice”, “innovation” and “flexibility” while making public schools increasingly stifling and inflexible. They also refer to public education as a monopoly, but isn’t that the goal of most corporations? EMOs could easily become a private-sector monopoly that completely sidesteps the democratically elected, locally controlled school boards. In market-based endeavors, success for one entity necessitates failure of another. We are guaranteeing the failure of the public schools. There is a reason that school boards exist: it is a separation of powers that is supposed to keep politics out of education and education relevant to and reflective of the values of the community. Do the values we want for our children’s education lie in competition and profit?
The spin on this study is in the works. The NAEP results were supposed to be released in January 2004, but this was delayed until December 2004 in order to provide an unprecedented analysis, which would adjust the results. This is in direct violation of the National Assessment Governing Board policy. "The government’s first obligation to the public was to release the NAEP charter school results, just like it does with other NAEP results," said Bella Rosenberg, an author of the AFT report. "Repeatedly delaying that report for the sake of packaging the results with an official explanation tarnishes NAEP’s gold-standard reputation." Another AFT study co- author, F. Howard Nelson, pointed out that the findings are disturbing given that charter schools are supposed to be the solution to failing public schools. What, then, is the solution to failing charter schools?
The News editorial stated that charters are not the problem but a response to the problem. But the day before this story broke, the Los Angeles Times reported that 10,000 charter school children in three districts were displaced a month before the first day of school after its largest charter school operator, the for-profit California Charter Academy, went belly-up. In Buffalo, if for-profit Edison Schools failed (and it has come damn close), over 1400 kids would be scrambling for a school placement, and the district would be expected to reabsorb them. If the idea is for Buffalo to save money by closing schools, this will lead to worse overcrowding, exacerbating the public school problems. It scares the hell out of me that the News simultaneously refers to charter schools as experimental and a response to a problem, especially when we have other states’ experiences to draw on and the results are not promising.
The News did call for accountability in the form of closing charters that don’t show improvement. In Albany, the chronically failing New Covenant Charter School was in violation of its charter as well as state and federal laws, and ranked dead last among elementary schools in Albany. Their charter was renewed with a slap on the wrist: only two grades were eliminated. When charter schools close, their proponents claim this as proof that the system works. The reality is that closing charters is politically unpopular; Buffalo has several failing charter schools but closing them would be tantamount to admitting they are not the panacea to “public” education that politicians claim they are. Better to assist their success than that of the public schools. M&T Bank thinks so.
Previous articles in this series by Bernadette Medige:
Part 1:The Privatization of Public Education (19 April 2003)Part 2: Segregation, Desegregation, Resegregation (2 May 2003)
Part 3: Two Public Conversations about Education (2 November 2003)
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.