I've written before about how the free market is a terrible match for public education (here, here and here, for example).
The actual free market (or as we actually experience it in America, the free-ish market) offers plenty of examples of the such a market wouldn't really serve education well at all. There are myriad examples of the triumph of marketing over quality, or market forces discouraging excellence, but for the moment, I'm going to ignore all of that.
Instead, let's consider one way in which the educational "marketplace" differs from every other free market arena-- involuntary customers.
We recently shopped for coffee makers at my house, so let's use them as an example. The coffee gadget market has a wide range of choices, ranging from cheap crap with a limited lifespan up to really expensive machinery that will carry itself to planned obsolescence with style and grace. But they all have one in common-- they are all made to be marketed to people who want to drink coffee.
But what would happen if Congress passed the Personal Use Coffee Maker Act of 2015, requiring every single person in the country to have a working coffee machine?
PUCMA would have little effect on people already owning a perfectly good coffee maker. But now the market would expand to include people who don't actually want to drink coffee, and wise coffee maker makers would find ways to market to that group as well.
Here's a coffee maker that makes verrrrry tiny cups of coffee, so you don't have more than spoonful to drink. Here's a coffee maker whose main feature is that it looks pretty on your counter. Here's a coffee maker that is an absolute piece of useless crap, but it is as cheap as we could make it and still be PUCMA compliant. Here's a coffee maker that actually makes decent hot chocolate. This one is actually a smoothie machine. This one makes a great cheese sandwich.
When a market is expanded to include people who don't actually want your product, market forces not only fail to foster excellence, but they actually foster crappiness.
I believe in the power and importance of a K-12 education; that's why I chose the work that I do. But I recognize that not everybody sees value in pubic education. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school that never, ever gives any assignment that requires work outside of school. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school where only sports matter. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school that only requires the child to show up only a few days out of every week. In a free market education world, could I make money marketing a school for those parents? You bet I could. Just as I could make money marketing a school that will never challenge a child's beliefs with science, or a school devoted to The One True Religion (whichever one will give me the best market share), or a school that lets them sit at home in their PJs and never do school work unless they're in the mood.
In fact, the one free market option that rarely comes up in these discussions of the power of competition in a free market is the option to not be part of the market.
You want to make a true free market for education? Repeal all mandatory school attendance laws.
Of course almost nobody wants to do that because we recognize that it would not only create chaos for the schools and, worse yet, a long-term mess for our whole society because (as I've said many times) parents are NOT the only stakeholders when it comes to education.
We don't repeal mandatory school attendance laws because it would be bad for society as a whole. Why would it be any better to allow a system in which a child could choose Might As Well Not Be Bothering To Attend High School? I'm thinking of the K12 cyber charter ads in PA that made the pitch, "Pick a school that won't get in the way of your kids' sports schedule" or asked "Is your child happy in school." Charter and voucher fans can say, "Oh, but there are no schools out there pretending to offer an education while marketing to students and families who want to look like they're doing the school thing without having to deal with any of the stuff they find annoying," and that's possibly largely true, but of course, given the lack of oversight in most states, we don't really have any way of knowing, do we?
Showing posts with label K12. Show all posts
Showing posts with label K12. Show all posts
Friday, January 23, 2015
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Forever Schools
You may well have seen some variation on this poster:
I've seen plenty of them (and we have a forever dog of our own).
This morning I came across this piece on Buzzfeed, of all places, talking about the beginning of the end for charter profiteers in general, and K12 in particular. And it reminded me of one more quality that distinguishes between modern profiteering charter schools and true public schools.
Public schools are forever schools, not until schools.
Public schools do not serve students until the financial returns get too low.
Public schools do not serve students until those students turn out to be too challenging.
Public schools do not serve students until they can't get away with lying about staff qualifications.
Public schools do not serve students until the students reveal learning disabilities.
Public schools do not serve students until the market presents a better investment opportunity.
Public schools do not serve students until the sponsoring corporation dissolves itself and disappears.
Public schools do not serve students until they can't get sweetheart deals from politicians any more.
Public schools do not serve students until they decide to just close up overnight with no notice.
Public schools do not serve students until the people running them feel like doing something else instead.
Public schools do not serve students until those students have to be pushed out for scoring too low on The Test.
A public school is a commitment. It's a community promising, "We will build this place to help our children learn and grow, and we will never, ever, close it for capricious or self-serving reasons. Families may come and go. Businesses may rise and fall. But when you come back here in a generation or two or three, you will find this school still standing."
It is true that forever schools don't really last forever (and our dog is not immortal, either). But the commitment is a forever commitment, a commitment that goes beyond individual staff, leaders, community members. The commitment is the community, past, present and future saying to their children and their children's children, "We will be right here, just as long as children need a safe place to learn and grow."
The modern profiteering charters make no such commitment. "We'll be right here," they say, "just as long as it serves our purposes."
There are cities, increasing in number, where leaders have trampled on the promise of public schools. Shame on those leaders, and shame on our national leaders who have encouraged the destruction of the public school promise. Wouldn't it be interesting if charter school companies had to sign contracts that, say, bound them to keeping a school open for ten, fifteen, twenty years whether they were making money or not. Wouldn't it be interesting if, in places like New Orleans, politicians had said, "You can open a charter school to replace the public school that used to be here, but you can't ever close it until we say you can. You must guarantee to provide educational services to the children of New Orleans as long as there are children in New Orleans." Public schools should be as permanent as any public institution can be. It is a huge ripoff to replace them with temporary schools having no more aspiration to permanence than the pop-up tent store selling Fourth of July fireworks.
In the meantime, the modern profiteering charters are just the educational version of the people who bring home puppies and a year later have taken them to the pound or abandoned them in the country or simply neglected them to death.
All pets should be forever pets. And all schools should be forever schools.
I've seen plenty of them (and we have a forever dog of our own).
This morning I came across this piece on Buzzfeed, of all places, talking about the beginning of the end for charter profiteers in general, and K12 in particular. And it reminded me of one more quality that distinguishes between modern profiteering charter schools and true public schools.
Public schools are forever schools, not until schools.
Public schools do not serve students until the financial returns get too low.
Public schools do not serve students until those students turn out to be too challenging.
Public schools do not serve students until they can't get away with lying about staff qualifications.
Public schools do not serve students until the students reveal learning disabilities.
Public schools do not serve students until the market presents a better investment opportunity.
Public schools do not serve students until the sponsoring corporation dissolves itself and disappears.
Public schools do not serve students until they can't get sweetheart deals from politicians any more.
Public schools do not serve students until they decide to just close up overnight with no notice.
Public schools do not serve students until the people running them feel like doing something else instead.
Public schools do not serve students until those students have to be pushed out for scoring too low on The Test.
A public school is a commitment. It's a community promising, "We will build this place to help our children learn and grow, and we will never, ever, close it for capricious or self-serving reasons. Families may come and go. Businesses may rise and fall. But when you come back here in a generation or two or three, you will find this school still standing."
It is true that forever schools don't really last forever (and our dog is not immortal, either). But the commitment is a forever commitment, a commitment that goes beyond individual staff, leaders, community members. The commitment is the community, past, present and future saying to their children and their children's children, "We will be right here, just as long as children need a safe place to learn and grow."
The modern profiteering charters make no such commitment. "We'll be right here," they say, "just as long as it serves our purposes."
There are cities, increasing in number, where leaders have trampled on the promise of public schools. Shame on those leaders, and shame on our national leaders who have encouraged the destruction of the public school promise. Wouldn't it be interesting if charter school companies had to sign contracts that, say, bound them to keeping a school open for ten, fifteen, twenty years whether they were making money or not. Wouldn't it be interesting if, in places like New Orleans, politicians had said, "You can open a charter school to replace the public school that used to be here, but you can't ever close it until we say you can. You must guarantee to provide educational services to the children of New Orleans as long as there are children in New Orleans." Public schools should be as permanent as any public institution can be. It is a huge ripoff to replace them with temporary schools having no more aspiration to permanence than the pop-up tent store selling Fourth of July fireworks.
In the meantime, the modern profiteering charters are just the educational version of the people who bring home puppies and a year later have taken them to the pound or abandoned them in the country or simply neglected them to death.
All pets should be forever pets. And all schools should be forever schools.
Monday, August 4, 2014
K12 Defies... Well, Everything
K12 remains the top dog in the junkyard of cyberschooling. It provides an instructive lesson in how a good pile of cash and friends in the right places can keep a business afloat even after people have poked holes in the hull.
There was never anything about the organization that didn't look like a red flag. It was set up by hedge fund manager Ronald Packer and propped up with money from junk bond king Michael Milken (an iconic Wall Street greedhound of the eighties who pioneered the art of getting caught, convicted and sent to prison, and still remaining rich and powerful). William Bennett, a former Secretary of Education and GOP pundit who was for many reformster ideas before it was cool, was a founding figurehead as well. More recently, Nathaniel Davis began rising through the executive ranks on the board (his previous experience-- CEO of XM radio).
K12 has been "embattled" all along. Here's a fairly brutal shot they took from the New York Times way back in December of 2011. Former teachers routinely write tell-alls about their experience, like this more recent guest piece on Anthony Cody's blog. The NCAA put K12 schools on the list of cybers that were disqualified from sports eligibility.
In February of this year, the Center for Media and Democracy named Ron Packard one of the highest paid public workers in the country (i.e. person paid with tax dollars). This despite "the alarming fact that only 28% of K12 Inc schools met state standards in 2010-2011."
A look at this report on executive compensation gives a picture of how lucrative the cyber charter business can be. Back in 2009, K12 was delivering a total of $5.51 million dollars in executive compensation. By 2012 that had climbed to $10.89 million, and the following year it jumped a whopping 96% to $21.37 million. And every last bit of it is our tax dollars at work. K12, like all charters, does not "make" money-- they just collect it from taxpayers.
Cyber schooling has long been a darling of ALEC, who, as they are wont to do, whipped up some helpful model legislation for states to follow. And legislatures have been mighty friendly to cybers. In PA, school districts must send their computed cost-per-student to the charters, but prior to 2011-2012 the state gave some of that money back to the bricks-and-mortar schools. Now, nothing.
Meanwhile, a cyber school can assign, say, 250 students to one teacher per subject. Each student gets a "free" computer. If we figure about 30K per teacher and about $500 per computer, that's a rough outlay of $245,000. So, we spend about 1K per student, while taking in anywhere from 8K to 20K per student (students with special needs are golden). That is a mighty pleasant profit margin.
K12 may have suffered remarkably few consequences for their educational achievements, but when you make your business all about the benjamins, you may have to answer for financial issues. Packard stepped down at the beginning of this year, apparently with a giant suitcase full of personal gains that some stockholders felt was a bit ill-gotten, and they decided to get the courts involved. This is part of a cascade of lawsuits covering everything from artificially inflating stock prices to lying about what the company is actually accomplishing.
It remains to be seen what happens next for the biggest star in the cyber-educational firmament. If my browser ads are any indication, they still have plenty of money for advertising, which only makes sense-- in the cyber charter business, your success is not based on how many students you teach, but on how many you enroll. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that those numbers finally start heading down.
To learn even more about this story, I cannot recommend enough the website TheTruth About K12-- they've followed this story carefully and have a thoughtful and thorough compendium of useful info. Stop on over and educate yourself.
There was never anything about the organization that didn't look like a red flag. It was set up by hedge fund manager Ronald Packer and propped up with money from junk bond king Michael Milken (an iconic Wall Street greedhound of the eighties who pioneered the art of getting caught, convicted and sent to prison, and still remaining rich and powerful). William Bennett, a former Secretary of Education and GOP pundit who was for many reformster ideas before it was cool, was a founding figurehead as well. More recently, Nathaniel Davis began rising through the executive ranks on the board (his previous experience-- CEO of XM radio).
K12 has been "embattled" all along. Here's a fairly brutal shot they took from the New York Times way back in December of 2011. Former teachers routinely write tell-alls about their experience, like this more recent guest piece on Anthony Cody's blog. The NCAA put K12 schools on the list of cybers that were disqualified from sports eligibility.
In February of this year, the Center for Media and Democracy named Ron Packard one of the highest paid public workers in the country (i.e. person paid with tax dollars). This despite "the alarming fact that only 28% of K12 Inc schools met state standards in 2010-2011."
A look at this report on executive compensation gives a picture of how lucrative the cyber charter business can be. Back in 2009, K12 was delivering a total of $5.51 million dollars in executive compensation. By 2012 that had climbed to $10.89 million, and the following year it jumped a whopping 96% to $21.37 million. And every last bit of it is our tax dollars at work. K12, like all charters, does not "make" money-- they just collect it from taxpayers.
Cyber schooling has long been a darling of ALEC, who, as they are wont to do, whipped up some helpful model legislation for states to follow. And legislatures have been mighty friendly to cybers. In PA, school districts must send their computed cost-per-student to the charters, but prior to 2011-2012 the state gave some of that money back to the bricks-and-mortar schools. Now, nothing.
Meanwhile, a cyber school can assign, say, 250 students to one teacher per subject. Each student gets a "free" computer. If we figure about 30K per teacher and about $500 per computer, that's a rough outlay of $245,000. So, we spend about 1K per student, while taking in anywhere from 8K to 20K per student (students with special needs are golden). That is a mighty pleasant profit margin.
K12 may have suffered remarkably few consequences for their educational achievements, but when you make your business all about the benjamins, you may have to answer for financial issues. Packard stepped down at the beginning of this year, apparently with a giant suitcase full of personal gains that some stockholders felt was a bit ill-gotten, and they decided to get the courts involved. This is part of a cascade of lawsuits covering everything from artificially inflating stock prices to lying about what the company is actually accomplishing.
It remains to be seen what happens next for the biggest star in the cyber-educational firmament. If my browser ads are any indication, they still have plenty of money for advertising, which only makes sense-- in the cyber charter business, your success is not based on how many students you teach, but on how many you enroll. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that those numbers finally start heading down.
To learn even more about this story, I cannot recommend enough the website TheTruth About K12-- they've followed this story carefully and have a thoughtful and thorough compendium of useful info. Stop on over and educate yourself.
Friday, August 23, 2013
K12 Go Away
Because I travel to plenty of ed sites, the internet is sure that I want to see plenty of ads about K12 and their awesome free on line schooling.
On the one hand, cool, because every ad they show me they pay for, and advertising K12 to me is a waste of their money.
Except, of course, that the money they're wasting is my tax money. The money they're wasting on radio spots and tv ads and big billboards is my tax money.
K12's ads are a great expression of the belief in free government money. The cyber-schools are advertised as free (and include a free computer!!) which is unvarnished baloney.
Aided by the legislature in Harrisburg, cyber-schools are bleeding local school district dry. They highlight one of the major flaws in school choice and its variations (of which cyber schools are just one)-- these kind of choice plans disenfranchise all the taxpayers in a school district who don't have children there.
Are you someone with grown children who wants to see your school district keep neighborhood schools open, because it's good for the community and it provides a solid education? Well, too bad. In many school districts, a handful of parents get to decide that the school should be closed because they want their child to attend the free school on the free computer.
In PA the problem is seriously exacerbated because of our crazy-pants formula assumes that if one student leaves a classroom, suddenly it's cheaper to operate that classroom, as if the light, heat, teacher, bussing, and other fixed costs are reduced. Meanwhile, the competing cyber-school business is paid vastly more than the cost of providing their service. I tried to think of an analogy for this, but it is so flipping insane that there isn't one. No wonder investors are getting into the cyber-school business-- it's like printing money. It's like running a used car lot where the customer hands you a filled out check and you give them whatever car you feel like giving them.
So, K12, no, I'm not interested. You aren't free, you aren't public, and for many , many students, you aren't even an education. Go away, and give me my tax dollars back.
On the one hand, cool, because every ad they show me they pay for, and advertising K12 to me is a waste of their money.
Except, of course, that the money they're wasting is my tax money. The money they're wasting on radio spots and tv ads and big billboards is my tax money.
K12's ads are a great expression of the belief in free government money. The cyber-schools are advertised as free (and include a free computer!!) which is unvarnished baloney.
Aided by the legislature in Harrisburg, cyber-schools are bleeding local school district dry. They highlight one of the major flaws in school choice and its variations (of which cyber schools are just one)-- these kind of choice plans disenfranchise all the taxpayers in a school district who don't have children there.
Are you someone with grown children who wants to see your school district keep neighborhood schools open, because it's good for the community and it provides a solid education? Well, too bad. In many school districts, a handful of parents get to decide that the school should be closed because they want their child to attend the free school on the free computer.
In PA the problem is seriously exacerbated because of our crazy-pants formula assumes that if one student leaves a classroom, suddenly it's cheaper to operate that classroom, as if the light, heat, teacher, bussing, and other fixed costs are reduced. Meanwhile, the competing cyber-school business is paid vastly more than the cost of providing their service. I tried to think of an analogy for this, but it is so flipping insane that there isn't one. No wonder investors are getting into the cyber-school business-- it's like printing money. It's like running a used car lot where the customer hands you a filled out check and you give them whatever car you feel like giving them.
So, K12, no, I'm not interested. You aren't free, you aren't public, and for many , many students, you aren't even an education. Go away, and give me my tax dollars back.
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