Kentucky has never jumped on the charter bandwagon. Some folks have been trying for years, but the legislature has always had trouble getting a bill passed, and so the charter sector has been dying on the vine. But the new governor would like to change that.
Matt Bevin, the new governor whose previous job was investment management, has repeatedly stated his intention to expand school choice through charter school expansion in Kentucky. Bevin seems to believe in the power of competition. Here he is in an interview laying out his thoughts:
There is a lot of concern about academic competition; competition is good, and for those who are quick to say that this is somehow going to come at the expense of public education – we need strong public education. That is where the vast majority of our students are getting their education and will continue to get their education, and we have to be able to support the teachers and administrators that are a part of it. So we don’t want to turn the whole thing upside down. But we have schools that have been failing for generations now. So let’s start with public charter schools. The students going there are public students, the funding comes in a similar manner, everyone will be better for this.
For Kentuckians who haven't had a lot of exposure to the issues that come with charters, this must sound pretty reasonable (Bevin buried his opponent pretty decisively). This post is for them.
Dear Kentuckians-- here are some things you may want to keep an eye on if you decide to jump into the charter end of the pool.
Transparency
Despite the use of the word "school," a charter school is much more like a private business than a public institution. You can't walk into the kitchen at McDonalds and demand to see how the special sauce is made, and you can't demand a tour of a Ford assembly plant. Likewise, charters tend to assert their right to be opaque and secretive. In one of the more famous examples, the Success Charter chain in New York went to court to prevent the state auditor from looking at their books to see what they were doing with the tax dollars the state was giving them.
You're being told that the way it works is that the state contracts with the charter operator-- the state hands over a pile of money and the charter promises to hit certain benchmarks. Are you sure that's all you want to know? Is there any other time you can think of when it would be okay for a public institution paid for with your tax dollars to refuse to tell you what they were doing with those dollars?
Local Control
Currently you are entitled to know how your district spends every cent, and while some may not be great at meeting that letter of the law, if you're unhappy with what your school is doing, you are entitled to attend a school board meeting where you are legally entitled to hear everything that goes into making decisions about your schools. If you don't like what you hear, you can say so by speaking formally or hollering informally. You can fight for the election of board members that you support.
But with a charter-- you can do nothing. You are not entitled to attend a board meeting, and nobody who runs the school is required to take your call, talk to you, or explain anything to you. They do not answer to the taxpayers, and they do not stand for election.
"I'll just pull my child out of school if I object strongly," you say? What if you don't have a child in school? Are you upset that your tax dollars are going to support a school that teaches communism is great or runs on a Sharia Law model? Too bad. Nobody has to listen to you. And if you are a parent arguing with the school after Counting Day (the day on which official enrollment is tallied), they will be happy to see you go, because the money associated with your child is already in the school's bank account.
Piles of Wasted Money
Do you think you could own and operate two homes for the same total cost as one home? No, me neither. But a charter system duplicates buildings, administrators, and a host of services that could be more efficiently in one building. Opening charters automatically must increase the total cost of education in your community.
Sucking Public Schools Dry
The classic simple charter funding model is to just have the per-pupil cost follow the pupil wherever she goes. If 5% of your high school students leave for a charter, 5% of your funding goes with them. Here's the problem-- if your school population drops by 5%, do your costs drop by 5% as well?No. You don't have 5% fewer buildings, 5% fewer buses or 5% fewer light and heating bills. You don't have 5% fewer administrators. You probably won't lose, say, an entire classroom's worth of third graders, so when you need to cut teachers to help make the budget, it's more likely to be an art or music teacher. Maybe a librarian.
And because charters are usually set up to help students "escape" the worst public schools, it is the most challenged and troubled schools that will lose the most resources. Unless your legislature decides to fully fund charters without simply moving money from the public system, this is a zero sum game where the public system must lose. And it's awfully hard to "compete" when someone keeps taking away the resources you need to be competitive.
Who Is Served?
Charter schools won't have room for everybody. Any kind of application process will favor families that understand the system and have the motivation to jump through the hoops. Even where all students have the possibility of entry into the charter, charters have many techniques for pushing out students-- particularly those with special needs.
Success?
Does any of the above really matter if charters get results? It's a fair question-- should we favor public schools out of tradition if charters can serve our children better?
Kentuckians are being told about great charter successes in New Orleans and other charter hubs around the country. These stories are exaggerations at best. Study after study finds little evidence that charters do any better than public schools. Where there are signs of success, we find that the charters are serving fewer students with greater disabilities and fewer English Language Learners. "Successful" charters also often have extra resources from private sponsors and contributors. In other words, the secret of charter success-- more resources, and only the more easily taught students-- is no secret, and could easily be applied to existing public schools-- if we were willig to change the mission of pblic education.
You should also examine the definition of success. Some charters define success very simply-- the students will score well on the Big Standardized Test. These schools maintain a tightly disciplined focus on a culture of compliance and endless test prep.
The "achievement gap" and "student achievement" refer to only one thing-- scores on standardized tests that cover math and reading. That is far too narrow a definition of success, and certainly does not represent "college and career readiness." ("We'd like to hire you because you take standardized tests really well," said no employer ever).
Stability
Charter schools are businesses, and they make decisions for business reasons. This does not make them evil, but it does mean that they are not going to keep an unprofitable school open in your neighborhood just because it's a nice thing to do. A public school cannot say, "You know what? It's just too hard to keep working at education in this community with such a tiny revenue stream, so we're just going to close up shop." A charter school can say such things-- and they often do. As of last fall, 200 charter schools had closed up shop in Ohio.
Follow the Money
The amount of money wrapped up in the education sector is huge, and charter schools have become a powerful tool for unlocking much of that. The largest chunk of investment in charter schools is not from educators or school-related industries, but from hedge fund managers looking for good return on investment. And just because a charter school operators is "non-profit" doesn't mean it's not making big money. Some charter school operators are scrupulous and ethical; some are not. And some practices are legal but eyebrow raising, like paying charter school chiefs nearly a half-million dollars, or leasing buildings from yourself.
This report from the National Education Policy Center shows the many ways in which charter schools can be used to funnel money to places it doesn't belong. Some states have instituted some stricter oversight, but states like Ohio show just how widespread scandal, fraud and waste can become when nobody is minding the money-saturated store at all (go ahead-- google "Ohio charter school scandal" and see what pops up).
The amount of money at stake means you need to be wary of people who are trying to sell you something. When a car salesman tells you that the 2016 Superwheels will change your life and make your family smart and beautiful, you would be wise to take it with a few hundred grains of salt. The money trail is often more tricky to trace when it comes to charter schools, but it is worth your while to trace it.
Watch the Big Picture
Ultimately, how Kentucky manages public education and the charter business is about more than just money (though it is certainly about that).
Kentucky is one of the states that has watched the farm industry turn into a factory model business. Farmers are now technicians who are simply meant to take orders from their corporate masters. Animals are now just product to be mass-produced with no concern for anything except their ability to be turned into meat. And the system is kept tilted in favor of the big corporations by a revolving door between corporate and government offices.
Modern education reform is an attempt to apply those same transformations to schools. Teachers are just to follow instructions and deliver pre-packaged lessons. Students are there to produce good-looking test results; their other concerns are unimportant. Charter schools are a leading edge of these transformations.
Charters represent a seismic shift. From he idea of public education as a shared good, a service provided by the community for every single one of its students, we move to the idea that schools are a consumer good, provided for a select few, and primarily serving the business interests of their investors. If you aren't careful, when you install charters, you change the very idea of what schools are for.
Can it be done?
Charter schools can potentially be a great addition to a school system, but only under the right conditions. Kentucky is in a unique position to set the rules up right from day one. If I were the Kentucky legislature, and I were dead set on starting up with charter schools, here's what I would do.
* Fund them fully. Rather than trying to run several parallel systems with the same money that previously only ran one, I would make sure that both the public and the charter systems were fully funded. That means the cost of schooling will go up for the taxpayers. If you really believe in charters, sell the idea.
* Complete transparency. Charters must operate with the same transparency and accountability as public schools. They must account for every cent they spend. They must do their decision-making in public. They must be completely and fully accountable to the taxpayers.
* Locally controlled. The people who run the charter school in the community must be there, in that community. Do not allow charter schools that are run by a board of directors in some other state.
* Fully open. The charter must be prepared to accept and serve any student who lives in that community. No creating barriers to entry or push-outs once in the school.
* Professionally staffed. Charters have often pushed for the option of putting any warm (cheap) body in a classroom. That's not okay.
* Regulated to avoid financial shenanigans. There are too many scams out there that have demonstrated all the ways in which a charter school can be nothing more than someone's get rich quick scheme. Regulators (using the complete transparency from above) should be clear and tough when it comes to making sure that charter school dollars go toward educating students and not making someone rich.
With all these in place, go ahead and set up charters where teachers and education leaders can try new, innovative and free-from-the-usual-rules educational approaches. But make sure that you are running a school and not a business. Charter boosters are going to sell, and sell hard, but if Kentuckians aren't careful, they'll find they've purchased imaginary benefits at far-too-high a cost.
Showing posts with label New Orleans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Orleans. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
ICYMI: This Week's Readings from the Edusphere
Some reading from this week in the edusphere.
13 Years of Dress Rehearsal
Chris Thinnes ran a back-to-school parent's night speech by Rachel Thinnes that is a great reminder that school is not just about students getting ready to live their lives -- their lives are going on right now. She also references Excellent Sheep, which is always bonus points as far as I'm concerned.
EdTPA and TFA Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Fred Klonsky spent a chunk of his week fending off feverish defenders of Pearson's teacher certification baloneyfest, EdTPA. Klonsky wrote several good take-downs of the program, but this one put it in the context of another favorite reformster program.
10 Years of Corporate Media Celebrating Disaster
You'll need a strong stomach for this look back at some of the decades most notable cheerleading for death and destruction in New Orleans. Because who cares how many people have to die, neighborhoods have to be destroyed, and citizens have to be permanently displaced if, when it's all done, privatizers can make some money and test scores go up, a little, in some places, for some people.
Message from Bethlehem Superintendent
The superintendent of Bethlehem Area Schools in PA wrote in the local paper a piece to show that he gets it, and that he regrets "a different world we are now in where a teacher potentially risks a negative evaluation because she is committed to helping her students develop their passions, gifts and talents."
NC Teachers Being 'Voluntarily Exploited'
Brief but powerful profile of three North Carolina teachers and how they make it work. These ladies are inspirational-- wait till you read about how one turns the experience of not being able to buy groceries into a growth experience for her own practice.
13 Years of Dress Rehearsal
Chris Thinnes ran a back-to-school parent's night speech by Rachel Thinnes that is a great reminder that school is not just about students getting ready to live their lives -- their lives are going on right now. She also references Excellent Sheep, which is always bonus points as far as I'm concerned.
EdTPA and TFA Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Fred Klonsky spent a chunk of his week fending off feverish defenders of Pearson's teacher certification baloneyfest, EdTPA. Klonsky wrote several good take-downs of the program, but this one put it in the context of another favorite reformster program.
10 Years of Corporate Media Celebrating Disaster
You'll need a strong stomach for this look back at some of the decades most notable cheerleading for death and destruction in New Orleans. Because who cares how many people have to die, neighborhoods have to be destroyed, and citizens have to be permanently displaced if, when it's all done, privatizers can make some money and test scores go up, a little, in some places, for some people.
Message from Bethlehem Superintendent
The superintendent of Bethlehem Area Schools in PA wrote in the local paper a piece to show that he gets it, and that he regrets "a different world we are now in where a teacher potentially risks a negative evaluation because she is committed to helping her students develop their passions, gifts and talents."
NC Teachers Being 'Voluntarily Exploited'
Brief but powerful profile of three North Carolina teachers and how they make it work. These ladies are inspirational-- wait till you read about how one turns the experience of not being able to buy groceries into a growth experience for her own practice.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
ICYMI: Good Edureads from the Week
I really thought I was going to fumble the ball this week. A combination of working the second weekend of our production of The Fantasticks, beginning-of-year in-service days, ninth grade orientation, organizing a 5K race, etc etc etc-- well, I got a bit behind on my own reading. But yesterday and today I stumbled over several must-reads for the week. I know it's a little late in the day (matinee and set strike), but here's some Sunday evening reading for you--
The Blackout
Jose Luis Vilson gives some articulate clarity to the questions raised by supporters of public schools who really think that black folks should stop pestering Presidential candidates and start getting with the right team.
Left Behind
Here's your if-you-only-read-one-thing selection for the week. This fully-researched series of articles looks at exactly how school choice plays out, and how it leaves the most challenged students behind in a half-empty school stripped of the resources they desperately need. The journalists here take a close-up look at North Charleston High in South Carolina, and the story is thorough, from individual student stories to some very handy interactive graphics that help the reader understand exactly what is happening. A well-told, fully-supported story of the worst side-effects of choice.
The Reality Television Paradigm of All Charter Systems
Sarah Tepper Blaine takes a look at the implications of a system like New Orleans means to our system of public education, and for students on the losing end of a two tier system.
The Myth of the New Orleans Makeover
Well, lookee here! The New York Times runs yet another criticism of the New Orleans sort-of-a-miracle.
Finally, google Dyett High Hunger Strike
and read whatever you can find that's the most current account of what's going on in the struggle for Dyett High parents to make their voices heard. If nothing else, check this link for the newest updates there. Spread the word.
As a bonus this week, I suggest that you read all five of the suggestions, because taken together, they suggest the outlines of the larger picture that's showing its iceberg head above the education waters.
The Blackout
Jose Luis Vilson gives some articulate clarity to the questions raised by supporters of public schools who really think that black folks should stop pestering Presidential candidates and start getting with the right team.
Left Behind
Here's your if-you-only-read-one-thing selection for the week. This fully-researched series of articles looks at exactly how school choice plays out, and how it leaves the most challenged students behind in a half-empty school stripped of the resources they desperately need. The journalists here take a close-up look at North Charleston High in South Carolina, and the story is thorough, from individual student stories to some very handy interactive graphics that help the reader understand exactly what is happening. A well-told, fully-supported story of the worst side-effects of choice.
The Reality Television Paradigm of All Charter Systems
Sarah Tepper Blaine takes a look at the implications of a system like New Orleans means to our system of public education, and for students on the losing end of a two tier system.
The Myth of the New Orleans Makeover
Well, lookee here! The New York Times runs yet another criticism of the New Orleans sort-of-a-miracle.
Finally, google Dyett High Hunger Strike
and read whatever you can find that's the most current account of what's going on in the struggle for Dyett High parents to make their voices heard. If nothing else, check this link for the newest updates there. Spread the word.
As a bonus this week, I suggest that you read all five of the suggestions, because taken together, they suggest the outlines of the larger picture that's showing its iceberg head above the education waters.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Schneider: No NOLA Miracle
I'm not going to add much of anything to Mercedes Schneider's post except to say that, in case you missed it-- you should read it.
The New Orleans story is one of the charter-choice golden narratives. It is the place where the reformsters got everything they wanted, so it has to be a success narrative because if they can't make it there, they can't make it anywhere.
Schneider is one of most invaluable researchers in true world of public school defenders, and she has done yet another piece of invaluable research. One chapter of the NOLA magical success tale is "The Story of How Charter-Choice Raised Graduation Rates." Turns out, not so much.
Reformsters tell that story wit a pre-Recovery School District graduation rate of 54.4% (because made up numbers are more credible when they're very specific). But out turns out that the pre-RSD rate was identical (or perhaps better) than then RSD rate. And looking at her methodology,
So read her post. Bookmark her post. Share her post. And whenever someone tries to tell you how the Recovery School District totally fixed New Orleans education, please acquaint them with some actual facts.
The New Orleans story is one of the charter-choice golden narratives. It is the place where the reformsters got everything they wanted, so it has to be a success narrative because if they can't make it there, they can't make it anywhere.
Schneider is one of most invaluable researchers in true world of public school defenders, and she has done yet another piece of invaluable research. One chapter of the NOLA magical success tale is "The Story of How Charter-Choice Raised Graduation Rates." Turns out, not so much.
Reformsters tell that story wit a pre-Recovery School District graduation rate of 54.4% (because made up numbers are more credible when they're very specific). But out turns out that the pre-RSD rate was identical (or perhaps better) than then RSD rate. And looking at her methodology,
So read her post. Bookmark her post. Share her post. And whenever someone tries to tell you how the Recovery School District totally fixed New Orleans education, please acquaint them with some actual facts.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
PA: Another Charter Boosting Plan
Pennsylvania is joining the list of states contemplating an Achievement School District. This is a great mechanism for replacing public schools with charters, disenfranchising taxpayers, and wasting a ton of money, but the push is coming from Sen. Lloyd Smucker, the Lancaster Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee even though he is no friend of public education in PA.
Smucker is proposing the bottom performing 5% of PA schools be given a choice-- either "transform" themselves by turning charter or "contracting with outside providers" and fix things in three years, or the state will take them over and then turn them into a charter or hire an outside provider to run them. So, hey-- actually, no choice at all! Schools that fall under this category will also get to scrap union seniority rules. And Smucker would like to include a parent trigger rule as well. So a veritable smorgasborg ofcorporate profit opportunities educational transformation.
Of course, the beauty of the 5% rule is that there are always schools in the bottom 5%. Theoretically, you could eventually end up converting a considerably larger percentage of your total schools.
The proposal frames this as a state takeover, and that's a bit odd since it presumes that the folks in Harrisburg apparently know the secret of educational success and they've just been holding out on us all these years. But it's not really a state takeover-- it's a state handoff, in which the state takes control of the schools away from local voters and taxpayers and hands that control over to charter operators. That's the beauty of the ASD.
If you are unfamiliar with the term, here's a quick primer:
Reformsters love how things worked out in New Orleans. A major disaster hit the city, crushed its public school system along with everything else, and cleared the ground for the installation of an all-charter system, the Recovery School District. That system allows the state to install a management board that serves as the maitre d' at a big, ole school buffet, giving various charter operators the opportunity to step up for their big fat slice of the tax dollar pie. Arne Duncan famously called Hurricane Katrina "the best thing that happened to the schools in New Orleans" and reformsters sat at home quietly dreaming of natural disasters obliterating all public schools across America.
But there's just never a natural disaster when you need one, so in most areas refomsters have had to settle for the slow-motion man-made disasters of funding cuts and "failing" scores of Big Standardized Tests. Combined with reformsters in charge like Tennessee's Kevin Huffman (the first TFA grad to be put in charge of an entire state's education system) man-made school disasters opened the door for Achievement School Districts.
The principle of an ASD is the same-- in theory, the state takes over some schools and lumps them together in a state-run school district. In practice, the state hires charters to come in and run the schools. An ASD is simply another mechanism for privatizing public schools.
How's it working? Well, New Orleans is now a charter paradise, with no public schools left at all. This means no neighborhood schools; every morning students travel back and forth across the city in a crazy quilt of bus routes to get to their schools. Local taxpayers have been completely disenfranchised, democratic local control of schools is gone, and families are pretty much at the mercy of schools that get to pick and choose their students ("school choice" it turns out to mean "school's choice").
As far as academic results go, there are mixed opinions. It's the opinion of everyone who's making money from the charter system that it's doing great. It's the opinion of everybody else that it's not. The failures of the RSD have been extensively documented by bloggers Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish, among others.
The ASD of Tennessee has produced similar results, converting a chunk of Memphis schools to charters with no improvement to show for it, despite claims that it would "catapult" the bottom 5% of schools into the top 25%.
So why are we considering this, exactly...?
Top reformster ronin Mike Petrilli (of the privatization-loving Fordham Institute) stopped to offer his well-paid opinion, and it offers the argument for an ASD.
It starts with the premise that "failing schools are, by and large, a creation of dysfunctional school districts." Here's Petrilli's explanation of how ASD's make everything All Better:
The genius of the Recovery School District and the Tennessee Achievement School District is that they pluck failing schools out of their dysfunctional districts and give them a new lease on life. They pump new blood into these schools with new staffing arrangements. They get rid of the sclerosis of the arteries by cutting through the red tape of overbearing central offices. But they also bring accountability—and a willingness to pull the plug if, despite heroic efforts, the patient still isn’t getting better.
It's a picturesque way to put the argument. It sounds so much better than "We take away local control, fire all the teachers and replace them with low-cost temps, and install a new bureaucracy that isn't accountable to anybody but owners and investors. But charters will totally retain the right to close up the school (even in the middle of the year) if they decide the business just isn't working for them."
Petrilli also trots out a Fordham study that purports to show that having your school closed and getting yourself booted to some other school is awesome. This study is not very convincing. It is even less convincing coming from the guy who has said that charters exist to save worthy wheat while leaving the chaff behind.
ASD vs Philly (and about those civil rights)
Currently, a big chunk of those bottom 5% schools are in Philadelphia, which makes this extra Kafka-esque, because that means the proposal is that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania should take control of the schools away from-- the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
But launching the ASD in Philly would keep one aspect of these turnaround plans consistent-- from New Orleans to Holyoke to Nashville, the rescue efforts consistently involve taking local control away from non-rich, non-white citizens. Because school reform involves overdoses of irony, the "civil rights" issue of our day involves taking away community schools and a democratic voice in running them from poor, Black Americans.
Comments?
Mike Wang is executive director of Philadelphia School Advocacy Partners, a group that advocates for charter expansion through the usual use of highly selective/inaccurate data, thinks this sounds awesome and claims it has worked in other states, which is true if by "worked" you mean "made some charter folks a ton of money." He says, "It seems to be really grounded in empowering local school districts to address their lowest-performing schools." Which is true is by "empowering" you mean "stripping of all control over their own schools."
Donna Cooper of Public Citizens for Children and Youth calls the proposal "a diversion and a smokescreen," which I think is a little unfair, since it's actually pretty clear what the proposal is about, if you just look.
But thank God for the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Senator Andrew Dinniman, who according to Philly.com "said that although he had not seen the proposal's details, he believes there cannot be a conversation about how to adequately deal with consistently low-performing schools without a serious discussion about the impact of poverty on education."
So if you're in Pennsylvania, you might want to take a moment to let Dinniman (and Smucker, too, if you have a taste for brick wall head banging) know that this is, indeed, a terrible idea designed to dismantle public education and sell off the scraps.
Smucker is proposing the bottom performing 5% of PA schools be given a choice-- either "transform" themselves by turning charter or "contracting with outside providers" and fix things in three years, or the state will take them over and then turn them into a charter or hire an outside provider to run them. So, hey-- actually, no choice at all! Schools that fall under this category will also get to scrap union seniority rules. And Smucker would like to include a parent trigger rule as well. So a veritable smorgasborg of
Of course, the beauty of the 5% rule is that there are always schools in the bottom 5%. Theoretically, you could eventually end up converting a considerably larger percentage of your total schools.
The proposal frames this as a state takeover, and that's a bit odd since it presumes that the folks in Harrisburg apparently know the secret of educational success and they've just been holding out on us all these years. But it's not really a state takeover-- it's a state handoff, in which the state takes control of the schools away from local voters and taxpayers and hands that control over to charter operators. That's the beauty of the ASD.
If you are unfamiliar with the term, here's a quick primer:
Reformsters love how things worked out in New Orleans. A major disaster hit the city, crushed its public school system along with everything else, and cleared the ground for the installation of an all-charter system, the Recovery School District. That system allows the state to install a management board that serves as the maitre d' at a big, ole school buffet, giving various charter operators the opportunity to step up for their big fat slice of the tax dollar pie. Arne Duncan famously called Hurricane Katrina "the best thing that happened to the schools in New Orleans" and reformsters sat at home quietly dreaming of natural disasters obliterating all public schools across America.
But there's just never a natural disaster when you need one, so in most areas refomsters have had to settle for the slow-motion man-made disasters of funding cuts and "failing" scores of Big Standardized Tests. Combined with reformsters in charge like Tennessee's Kevin Huffman (the first TFA grad to be put in charge of an entire state's education system) man-made school disasters opened the door for Achievement School Districts.
The principle of an ASD is the same-- in theory, the state takes over some schools and lumps them together in a state-run school district. In practice, the state hires charters to come in and run the schools. An ASD is simply another mechanism for privatizing public schools.
How's it working? Well, New Orleans is now a charter paradise, with no public schools left at all. This means no neighborhood schools; every morning students travel back and forth across the city in a crazy quilt of bus routes to get to their schools. Local taxpayers have been completely disenfranchised, democratic local control of schools is gone, and families are pretty much at the mercy of schools that get to pick and choose their students ("school choice" it turns out to mean "school's choice").
As far as academic results go, there are mixed opinions. It's the opinion of everyone who's making money from the charter system that it's doing great. It's the opinion of everybody else that it's not. The failures of the RSD have been extensively documented by bloggers Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish, among others.
The ASD of Tennessee has produced similar results, converting a chunk of Memphis schools to charters with no improvement to show for it, despite claims that it would "catapult" the bottom 5% of schools into the top 25%.
So why are we considering this, exactly...?
Top reformster ronin Mike Petrilli (of the privatization-loving Fordham Institute) stopped to offer his well-paid opinion, and it offers the argument for an ASD.
It starts with the premise that "failing schools are, by and large, a creation of dysfunctional school districts." Here's Petrilli's explanation of how ASD's make everything All Better:
The genius of the Recovery School District and the Tennessee Achievement School District is that they pluck failing schools out of their dysfunctional districts and give them a new lease on life. They pump new blood into these schools with new staffing arrangements. They get rid of the sclerosis of the arteries by cutting through the red tape of overbearing central offices. But they also bring accountability—and a willingness to pull the plug if, despite heroic efforts, the patient still isn’t getting better.
It's a picturesque way to put the argument. It sounds so much better than "We take away local control, fire all the teachers and replace them with low-cost temps, and install a new bureaucracy that isn't accountable to anybody but owners and investors. But charters will totally retain the right to close up the school (even in the middle of the year) if they decide the business just isn't working for them."
Petrilli also trots out a Fordham study that purports to show that having your school closed and getting yourself booted to some other school is awesome. This study is not very convincing. It is even less convincing coming from the guy who has said that charters exist to save worthy wheat while leaving the chaff behind.
ASD vs Philly (and about those civil rights)
Currently, a big chunk of those bottom 5% schools are in Philadelphia, which makes this extra Kafka-esque, because that means the proposal is that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania should take control of the schools away from-- the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
But launching the ASD in Philly would keep one aspect of these turnaround plans consistent-- from New Orleans to Holyoke to Nashville, the rescue efforts consistently involve taking local control away from non-rich, non-white citizens. Because school reform involves overdoses of irony, the "civil rights" issue of our day involves taking away community schools and a democratic voice in running them from poor, Black Americans.
Comments?
Mike Wang is executive director of Philadelphia School Advocacy Partners, a group that advocates for charter expansion through the usual use of highly selective/inaccurate data, thinks this sounds awesome and claims it has worked in other states, which is true if by "worked" you mean "made some charter folks a ton of money." He says, "It seems to be really grounded in empowering local school districts to address their lowest-performing schools." Which is true is by "empowering" you mean "stripping of all control over their own schools."
Donna Cooper of Public Citizens for Children and Youth calls the proposal "a diversion and a smokescreen," which I think is a little unfair, since it's actually pretty clear what the proposal is about, if you just look.
But thank God for the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Senator Andrew Dinniman, who according to Philly.com "said that although he had not seen the proposal's details, he believes there cannot be a conversation about how to adequately deal with consistently low-performing schools without a serious discussion about the impact of poverty on education."
So if you're in Pennsylvania, you might want to take a moment to let Dinniman (and Smucker, too, if you have a taste for brick wall head banging) know that this is, indeed, a terrible idea designed to dismantle public education and sell off the scraps.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Get the New Orleans Story Out
I have even more interest in the New Orleans Recovery School District than ever, because while nobody was looking, the idea of such a school district seems to have skulked its way into Pennsylvania.
New Orleans is a reformster's dream, a school district where all of that messy democratically-controlled local public school system could be swept away, clearing the ground for edupreneurs to start sweeping up some of that sweet, sweet money.
The idea has spread. I've probably spent the most space here on Tennessee's Achievement School District. The idea of these districts is to set up a system in which local control and democratically-elected boards can be completely circumvented and some bureaucratic-corporate entity gets to decide which eduprofiteer gets to cash in. These kind of districts are truly the privatizers' dream, a happy land where students and families are simply conduits for generating tax-based revenue without regard for community, democracy, educational quality-- well, anything at all except those sweet, sweet piles of cash.
Not every location has been so fortunate as to be hit by a deadly and destructive hurricane, so in every place that's not New Orleans, crafting a narrative of public school disaster has taken a little longer. It takes a while to slowly starve a school district into submission or to generate the kind of BS Test scores that allow little boys to cry out about public school wolves. But reformster efforts to create disaster have begun to pay off.
In the meantime, reformsters have also done their best to sell a narrative of NOLA success. The RSD is awesome! Everyone is happy! Student scores are way up! It has been both horrifying and depressing to see how thoroughly this narrative has been adopted, leaving people like Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish to get out the story of what is really happening down there. This is a critical talking point-- New Orleans is the test of every reformster idea and they must sell it as a crown jewel in order to keep moving their programs forward. What Americans come to believe about the New Orleans Recovery School District is going to shape what comes next in the struggle for public education in this country.
That's why I'm asking for help for a friend. Reformsters are spending millions upon millions of dollars promoting and pushing the narrative of the Miracle Revival of New Orleans Schools, while the truth has to depend on people working for $0.00 in their free time to get the word out.
Jennifer Berkshire (Edushyster) proposes to travel to New Orleans and get the stories that aren't being told by speaking to the actual live human citizens who are living through this privatized democracy-free school system. Unlike the reformster crowd, Berkshire does not have zillionaire backers, or even pedestrian millionaire backers. If you care about this stuff, if you think that voices speaking up for democracy and public education and quality education and students above profits-- if you believe all that stuff matters, this is a critical point at which you can chip in.
The Beacon is a site for crowdsourcing journalism projects. It gives anyone with worthy work to do a way to meet the expenses of doing that work without having to make a deal with the corporate devil to do it.
We are spread out and with limited resources. But if, for instance, each of the people who follows this blog on Facebook kicked in ten bucks, Berkshire would more than meet her target. I've pledged. Heck, my mom has pledged. You should do the same. Wherever you are, whatever your situation, this is a concrete way to help the cause of public education in this country at the critical juncture of a very important story-- a story that is unlikely to be covered well by much of the regular media.
This is your chance to help. Follow the link, make a pledge, help the real story of New Orleans get out. This matters.
New Orleans is a reformster's dream, a school district where all of that messy democratically-controlled local public school system could be swept away, clearing the ground for edupreneurs to start sweeping up some of that sweet, sweet money.
The idea has spread. I've probably spent the most space here on Tennessee's Achievement School District. The idea of these districts is to set up a system in which local control and democratically-elected boards can be completely circumvented and some bureaucratic-corporate entity gets to decide which eduprofiteer gets to cash in. These kind of districts are truly the privatizers' dream, a happy land where students and families are simply conduits for generating tax-based revenue without regard for community, democracy, educational quality-- well, anything at all except those sweet, sweet piles of cash.
Not every location has been so fortunate as to be hit by a deadly and destructive hurricane, so in every place that's not New Orleans, crafting a narrative of public school disaster has taken a little longer. It takes a while to slowly starve a school district into submission or to generate the kind of BS Test scores that allow little boys to cry out about public school wolves. But reformster efforts to create disaster have begun to pay off.
In the meantime, reformsters have also done their best to sell a narrative of NOLA success. The RSD is awesome! Everyone is happy! Student scores are way up! It has been both horrifying and depressing to see how thoroughly this narrative has been adopted, leaving people like Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish to get out the story of what is really happening down there. This is a critical talking point-- New Orleans is the test of every reformster idea and they must sell it as a crown jewel in order to keep moving their programs forward. What Americans come to believe about the New Orleans Recovery School District is going to shape what comes next in the struggle for public education in this country.
That's why I'm asking for help for a friend. Reformsters are spending millions upon millions of dollars promoting and pushing the narrative of the Miracle Revival of New Orleans Schools, while the truth has to depend on people working for $0.00 in their free time to get the word out.
Jennifer Berkshire (Edushyster) proposes to travel to New Orleans and get the stories that aren't being told by speaking to the actual live human citizens who are living through this privatized democracy-free school system. Unlike the reformster crowd, Berkshire does not have zillionaire backers, or even pedestrian millionaire backers. If you care about this stuff, if you think that voices speaking up for democracy and public education and quality education and students above profits-- if you believe all that stuff matters, this is a critical point at which you can chip in.
The Beacon is a site for crowdsourcing journalism projects. It gives anyone with worthy work to do a way to meet the expenses of doing that work without having to make a deal with the corporate devil to do it.
We are spread out and with limited resources. But if, for instance, each of the people who follows this blog on Facebook kicked in ten bucks, Berkshire would more than meet her target. I've pledged. Heck, my mom has pledged. You should do the same. Wherever you are, whatever your situation, this is a concrete way to help the cause of public education in this country at the critical juncture of a very important story-- a story that is unlikely to be covered well by much of the regular media.
This is your chance to help. Follow the link, make a pledge, help the real story of New Orleans get out. This matters.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Katrina Is Headed for Atlanta
Over the weekend, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an advertisement for article about New Orleans charterfied school district, because the Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia would like to get rid of his own public school system. He's just not fortunate enough to have a major hurricane tear up his state. But don't worry, Georgians-- you, too, can have your own disaster area.
The article, among other things, shows that charter marketing is improving. For instance, they've learned that they need to talk more about being connected to the community and less about escaping the tyranny of zip codes. This helps them conceal that charter schools are not neighborhood schools, disconnected from any particular community (if you want to read a scholarly look at this in New Orleans, here's Brian Beabout's "Reconciling Student Outcomes and Community Self-Reliance in Modern School Reform Contexts.") Sarrio says that unnamed Louisiana educators recommend making the community part of the decisions, which seems to conflict with this NPR coverage of the district entitled "The End of Neighborhood Schools."
But the basic sales pitch is the same as always. Talking about the Arthur Ashe charter, Jaime Sarrio writes:
Advocates of the model say Ashe and schools like it show what’s possible when elected school boards, unions and poorly run school systems get out of the way and let school leaders decide how to educate students.
How exactly does one square getting rid of locally elected school boards with being connected to your community? "We are happy to work with members of the community just so long as they never get to make any decisions"? It's that damned democracy-- it so cramps a "school leader's" style.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal wants voters to create a state-run district to take over struggling schools.
This sort of thing must give hard-core conservatives a fit. Replace schools with a state-run system?! Who runs the current system? Keebler elves? But of course, Deal means to cut local control out of the loop, so that state-level bureaucrats can apply their higher levels of wisdom, because local school boards are all tied up in elections and regulations and such. Also, it's easier for charter operators to have one stop shopping.
The "freedom from rules" argument is an old one for charters, and after all these years it still makes zero sense. The government has tied public schools' hands with all these terrible rules, so we need new schools, say the legislators who tied schools' hands in the first place. Couldn't we just, I don't know, untie some hands? This is like locking a bunch of people in a room, throwing a molotov cocktail in there with them, then standing outside the door with the keys and saying, "Well, I guess we have to build another set of doors." Use the damn keys (and stop throwing molotov cocktails)!
Sarrio's article includes a short history of NOLA's Recovery School District. I've read a lot about the district; this history seems like the version you would get only by reading the press releases of the charter boosters. Here's state board member and charter cheerleader Leslie Jacobs:
“The philosophy behind the recovery school district is very simple: Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better,” Jacobs said. They wanted to make “the risk of doing nothing in the face of failure more painful than the risk of trying something that doesn’t work.”
Let's be honest-- we're talking about sub-contracting a government function to a money-making entity. And unless I missed something, this "same building, same kids" stuff is high grade baloney.
Sarrio's article includes the same old charter dog whistles:
“You have to have people who believe all kids can learn regardless of where they come from, and we believe that,” said Erin Hames, education policy advisor for Gov. Nathan Deal.
Right. Because teachers don't believe any such thing. If you want people who really believe in the educational promise of children, you don't want adults who have dedicated their professional lives to teaching-- you want businessmen and bureaucrats.
Sarrio visits a KIPP school and takes a hard-hitting guided tour and discovers that-- surprise-- KIPP school is awesome! Computers! And most importantly, autonomy-- KIPP school leaders can do whatever the hell they want! Because democracy is a drag, and accountability is for lesser operations tied to that foolish democracy model.
The article also talks to "consultant" Paul Pastorek, former LA state superintendent now cashing in as an "expert" in how to charterize a school system. He indicates that such a system isn't a good fit for just any state (only the special ones, I guess). He notes that Georgia has the advantage of a "strong accountability system," which in privatization-speak means "good system for labeling schools failures so that they can be targeted for takeover."
Unnamed Louisiana school leader types also note that Georgia would need to grow itself some more school leaders, which in charter-speak usually seems to mean "people who are prepared to operate like CEOs rather than professional educators." I recommend a system like the one being launched in Ohio, which will give candidates one year of interning resulting in an MBA and a principal's certificate.
Did Sarrio discover anything in New Orleans that would suggest that the charterization was anything less than awesome. Well, she did note that some folks claimed that charters were " unevenly expelling or threatening to expel problem students in an attempt to inflate test scores." But we can relax, because "the district has made changes to address these concerns." Oh, and that lawsuit brought by parents of students with disabilities was totally settled, so that's okay now.
She did get a quote from parent advocate Karen Harper Royal suggesting that there are better ways to improve "as opposed to this game we’re playing with school roulette, closing schools and opening schools." Which is just confusing because I thought charters were totes community schools now.
Sarrio also talked to Erika McConduit-Diggs, president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, who "said the speed of the changes and the the dismissal of almost 7,000 Orleans Parish teachers, which courts later ruled unlawful, left a scar on the community that hasn’t healed."
The overall tone, however, is to suggest that the RSD is a success. Sarrio and her sources are careful not to call it a miracle, but settle for the impression that it's a modest success that is ever-so-much-better than what it replaced, and surely it will be a great idea for Georgia. I would recommend that before the next time she writes about New Orleans, Sarrio read through the works of Mercedes Schneider, Crazy Crawfish and Geauxteacher, just for starters.
Sarrio has missed a lot. A lot. In fact, if you are only going to read one other account of what's going on in NOLA, I recommend that NPR article mentioned above. In that article you can read about just how cut off these schools are from any community. You can read about the horrific process of trying to get your child into a school (and the hope that you won't be putting your child on a bus at 6 AM for a hour-plus ride). You can read about Douglass Harris and Beth Sondel and their findings that what tiny test improvements shown by RSD are the result of a narrowing of curriculum, a growing skill in teaching to the test. You can read about the hyper-repressive test-prep atmosphere of a KIPP school. You can read about how counseling out students helps grow test scores. You can read about the system's dependence on outside money to support its higher-than-state-average per pupil spending.
And this is NPR, which has not proven to be particularly loyal to the traditional public school model. And yet it seems clear that Leslie Jacobs characterization of the NOLA plan given a close-to-lede spot in Sarrio's article-- Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better-- is incorrect on all counts. They sorted the kids, closed the buildings, and spent more money to hire charter operators who have not, as yet, shown any great measure of success.
The business interests who want to take a big bite of Georgia peach did a nice job with this coverage, but the voters, taxpayers, parents, children, and community members of Georgia deserve a better, clearer, more accurate look at the public education disaster headed their way.
The article, among other things, shows that charter marketing is improving. For instance, they've learned that they need to talk more about being connected to the community and less about escaping the tyranny of zip codes. This helps them conceal that charter schools are not neighborhood schools, disconnected from any particular community (if you want to read a scholarly look at this in New Orleans, here's Brian Beabout's "Reconciling Student Outcomes and Community Self-Reliance in Modern School Reform Contexts.") Sarrio says that unnamed Louisiana educators recommend making the community part of the decisions, which seems to conflict with this NPR coverage of the district entitled "The End of Neighborhood Schools."
But the basic sales pitch is the same as always. Talking about the Arthur Ashe charter, Jaime Sarrio writes:
Advocates of the model say Ashe and schools like it show what’s possible when elected school boards, unions and poorly run school systems get out of the way and let school leaders decide how to educate students.
How exactly does one square getting rid of locally elected school boards with being connected to your community? "We are happy to work with members of the community just so long as they never get to make any decisions"? It's that damned democracy-- it so cramps a "school leader's" style.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal wants voters to create a state-run district to take over struggling schools.
This sort of thing must give hard-core conservatives a fit. Replace schools with a state-run system?! Who runs the current system? Keebler elves? But of course, Deal means to cut local control out of the loop, so that state-level bureaucrats can apply their higher levels of wisdom, because local school boards are all tied up in elections and regulations and such. Also, it's easier for charter operators to have one stop shopping.
The "freedom from rules" argument is an old one for charters, and after all these years it still makes zero sense. The government has tied public schools' hands with all these terrible rules, so we need new schools, say the legislators who tied schools' hands in the first place. Couldn't we just, I don't know, untie some hands? This is like locking a bunch of people in a room, throwing a molotov cocktail in there with them, then standing outside the door with the keys and saying, "Well, I guess we have to build another set of doors." Use the damn keys (and stop throwing molotov cocktails)!
Sarrio's article includes a short history of NOLA's Recovery School District. I've read a lot about the district; this history seems like the version you would get only by reading the press releases of the charter boosters. Here's state board member and charter cheerleader Leslie Jacobs:
“The philosophy behind the recovery school district is very simple: Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better,” Jacobs said. They wanted to make “the risk of doing nothing in the face of failure more painful than the risk of trying something that doesn’t work.”
Let's be honest-- we're talking about sub-contracting a government function to a money-making entity. And unless I missed something, this "same building, same kids" stuff is high grade baloney.
Sarrio's article includes the same old charter dog whistles:
“You have to have people who believe all kids can learn regardless of where they come from, and we believe that,” said Erin Hames, education policy advisor for Gov. Nathan Deal.
Right. Because teachers don't believe any such thing. If you want people who really believe in the educational promise of children, you don't want adults who have dedicated their professional lives to teaching-- you want businessmen and bureaucrats.
Sarrio visits a KIPP school and takes a hard-hitting guided tour and discovers that-- surprise-- KIPP school is awesome! Computers! And most importantly, autonomy-- KIPP school leaders can do whatever the hell they want! Because democracy is a drag, and accountability is for lesser operations tied to that foolish democracy model.
The article also talks to "consultant" Paul Pastorek, former LA state superintendent now cashing in as an "expert" in how to charterize a school system. He indicates that such a system isn't a good fit for just any state (only the special ones, I guess). He notes that Georgia has the advantage of a "strong accountability system," which in privatization-speak means "good system for labeling schools failures so that they can be targeted for takeover."
Unnamed Louisiana school leader types also note that Georgia would need to grow itself some more school leaders, which in charter-speak usually seems to mean "people who are prepared to operate like CEOs rather than professional educators." I recommend a system like the one being launched in Ohio, which will give candidates one year of interning resulting in an MBA and a principal's certificate.
Did Sarrio discover anything in New Orleans that would suggest that the charterization was anything less than awesome. Well, she did note that some folks claimed that charters were " unevenly expelling or threatening to expel problem students in an attempt to inflate test scores." But we can relax, because "the district has made changes to address these concerns." Oh, and that lawsuit brought by parents of students with disabilities was totally settled, so that's okay now.
She did get a quote from parent advocate Karen Harper Royal suggesting that there are better ways to improve "as opposed to this game we’re playing with school roulette, closing schools and opening schools." Which is just confusing because I thought charters were totes community schools now.
Sarrio also talked to Erika McConduit-Diggs, president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, who "said the speed of the changes and the the dismissal of almost 7,000 Orleans Parish teachers, which courts later ruled unlawful, left a scar on the community that hasn’t healed."
The overall tone, however, is to suggest that the RSD is a success. Sarrio and her sources are careful not to call it a miracle, but settle for the impression that it's a modest success that is ever-so-much-better than what it replaced, and surely it will be a great idea for Georgia. I would recommend that before the next time she writes about New Orleans, Sarrio read through the works of Mercedes Schneider, Crazy Crawfish and Geauxteacher, just for starters.
Sarrio has missed a lot. A lot. In fact, if you are only going to read one other account of what's going on in NOLA, I recommend that NPR article mentioned above. In that article you can read about just how cut off these schools are from any community. You can read about the horrific process of trying to get your child into a school (and the hope that you won't be putting your child on a bus at 6 AM for a hour-plus ride). You can read about Douglass Harris and Beth Sondel and their findings that what tiny test improvements shown by RSD are the result of a narrowing of curriculum, a growing skill in teaching to the test. You can read about the hyper-repressive test-prep atmosphere of a KIPP school. You can read about how counseling out students helps grow test scores. You can read about the system's dependence on outside money to support its higher-than-state-average per pupil spending.
And this is NPR, which has not proven to be particularly loyal to the traditional public school model. And yet it seems clear that Leslie Jacobs characterization of the NOLA plan given a close-to-lede spot in Sarrio's article-- Take the same kids, the same building, the same amount of money, give it to someone else to operate to prove we can do better-- is incorrect on all counts. They sorted the kids, closed the buildings, and spent more money to hire charter operators who have not, as yet, shown any great measure of success.
The business interests who want to take a big bite of Georgia peach did a nice job with this coverage, but the voters, taxpayers, parents, children, and community members of Georgia deserve a better, clearer, more accurate look at the public education disaster headed their way.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Outsourcing, Teaching, and Not Understanding the Free Market
The destruction of teaching as a US profession continues to move forward.
Takepart yesterday reported on the increasing use of teachers from the Philippines to fill empty spots in the US. The article focuses on this move as a response to teacher shortages in Arizona, but it alludes to teacher shortages around the country.
This is a tricky subject. On the one hand, teacher shortages are a fairly predictable outcome of the continued assault on the profession. By stripping teachers of autonomy, dropping the pay level, reducing teaching to clerical script-reading work, removing all job security, gutting the parts of teaching that traditionally attract people, and denigrating the profession on a regular basis, the Folks In Charge have assured that teaching today is far less attractive as a profession than it has ever been. For example, given the current conditions there, what person in her right mind would pursue teaching as a lifelong career in North Carolina?
On the other hand, teacher "shortages" are being used as an excuse for any number of misbehaviors. The article mentions a group of Filipino teachers recruited to teach in Baton Rouge, and if gulf coast Louisiana, where 7500 teachers were wrongfully fired from the New Orleans school district-- if that part of the country has a teacher shortage, I'll eat my hat.
The importing of Filipino teachers is already revealing itself to be borderline human trafficking. Those Baton Rouge teachers won a $4.5 million suit against the "recruiters" who charged them $7K for their "applications" and demanded a cut of their wages. Turns out these kinds of shenanigans are not that uncommon.
Nor is the article very forthcoming on the wage issue. The income that the Filipinos make is described as ten times what they could make back home, but it doesn't address whether they are paid the same that a home-grown teacher would have made. Are they being hired at US bargain prices? It's hard not to suspect as much.
In US labor issues, management often develops a sudden lack of understanding of how the free market works. So let me refresh their sad memories.
The free market sets prices by a very simple mechanism. If you want to buy gold for a penny a pound, you offer that amount. If nobody will sell you gold at that price, you have to offer more. You have to keep offering more until somebody will sell.
It is no different for labor. If you want to pay a dollar a day to hire someone for a job, and nobody will take the job, you have to offer more, and keep offering more until someone says, "Yes."
If you have a labor "shortage," then unless you are on a desert island with just two other people, you don't really have a labor shortage at all. What you have is a Willing To Meet the Minimum Conditions Under Which People Will Work For You shortage. Even minimum wage employers, who in lean times will advertise that they're hiring for more than minimum wage, get that.
In a very real sense, there is no teacher shortage in this country at all. What there is is an unwillingness to make teaching an appealing profession that people will actively pursue and stay with for a lifetime. Depending on your location,it may be about money, or autonomy, or job security, or basic teaching conditions (if you're in some place like North Carolina, sorry, but it's all of the above). Another question the article doesn't ask is this-- why isn't Arizons headhunting in other states? Even Virginia (not exactly a teachers' paradise) recognized that North Carolina teachers were ripe for poaching. Why would you recruit teachers from the Philipines, unless you were specifically looking to recruit people who would work for less than the professionals here on the mainland?
Of course, if no one will sell you gold for a penny a pound, another alternative is to find somebody who will sell you really shiny metal that's sort of gold colored. And if your business model is actually about selling fake gold at huge profit to suckers who mistake it for the real thing, this arrangement is perfect. Since many of our reformsters don't really want lifetime career teachers anyway (too expensive, too uppity), refusing to meet the conditions for employment is a great way to shut out the "overqualified" labor they don't want.
That this brings human trafficking into the world of education is no surprise. Much of modern school reform is based on a disregard for the humanity of students and teachers, and one huge thrust of reform has been to define teaching down from a skilled profession to unskilled labor. Trying to profit from trafficking in that labor just seems like a logical extension of the ethics already in play. It's appalling and inexcusable, but it's not unexpected.
Takepart yesterday reported on the increasing use of teachers from the Philippines to fill empty spots in the US. The article focuses on this move as a response to teacher shortages in Arizona, but it alludes to teacher shortages around the country.
This is a tricky subject. On the one hand, teacher shortages are a fairly predictable outcome of the continued assault on the profession. By stripping teachers of autonomy, dropping the pay level, reducing teaching to clerical script-reading work, removing all job security, gutting the parts of teaching that traditionally attract people, and denigrating the profession on a regular basis, the Folks In Charge have assured that teaching today is far less attractive as a profession than it has ever been. For example, given the current conditions there, what person in her right mind would pursue teaching as a lifelong career in North Carolina?
On the other hand, teacher "shortages" are being used as an excuse for any number of misbehaviors. The article mentions a group of Filipino teachers recruited to teach in Baton Rouge, and if gulf coast Louisiana, where 7500 teachers were wrongfully fired from the New Orleans school district-- if that part of the country has a teacher shortage, I'll eat my hat.
The importing of Filipino teachers is already revealing itself to be borderline human trafficking. Those Baton Rouge teachers won a $4.5 million suit against the "recruiters" who charged them $7K for their "applications" and demanded a cut of their wages. Turns out these kinds of shenanigans are not that uncommon.
Nor is the article very forthcoming on the wage issue. The income that the Filipinos make is described as ten times what they could make back home, but it doesn't address whether they are paid the same that a home-grown teacher would have made. Are they being hired at US bargain prices? It's hard not to suspect as much.
In US labor issues, management often develops a sudden lack of understanding of how the free market works. So let me refresh their sad memories.
The free market sets prices by a very simple mechanism. If you want to buy gold for a penny a pound, you offer that amount. If nobody will sell you gold at that price, you have to offer more. You have to keep offering more until somebody will sell.
It is no different for labor. If you want to pay a dollar a day to hire someone for a job, and nobody will take the job, you have to offer more, and keep offering more until someone says, "Yes."
If you have a labor "shortage," then unless you are on a desert island with just two other people, you don't really have a labor shortage at all. What you have is a Willing To Meet the Minimum Conditions Under Which People Will Work For You shortage. Even minimum wage employers, who in lean times will advertise that they're hiring for more than minimum wage, get that.
In a very real sense, there is no teacher shortage in this country at all. What there is is an unwillingness to make teaching an appealing profession that people will actively pursue and stay with for a lifetime. Depending on your location,it may be about money, or autonomy, or job security, or basic teaching conditions (if you're in some place like North Carolina, sorry, but it's all of the above). Another question the article doesn't ask is this-- why isn't Arizons headhunting in other states? Even Virginia (not exactly a teachers' paradise) recognized that North Carolina teachers were ripe for poaching. Why would you recruit teachers from the Philipines, unless you were specifically looking to recruit people who would work for less than the professionals here on the mainland?
Of course, if no one will sell you gold for a penny a pound, another alternative is to find somebody who will sell you really shiny metal that's sort of gold colored. And if your business model is actually about selling fake gold at huge profit to suckers who mistake it for the real thing, this arrangement is perfect. Since many of our reformsters don't really want lifetime career teachers anyway (too expensive, too uppity), refusing to meet the conditions for employment is a great way to shut out the "overqualified" labor they don't want.
That this brings human trafficking into the world of education is no surprise. Much of modern school reform is based on a disregard for the humanity of students and teachers, and one huge thrust of reform has been to define teaching down from a skilled profession to unskilled labor. Trying to profit from trafficking in that labor just seems like a logical extension of the ethics already in play. It's appalling and inexcusable, but it's not unexpected.
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