Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Save Money, Make Money, Create Jobs for the Children of the Elite What School Reform Is Really About

In recent months, I lost whatever illusions I used to have that there is a shred of idealism behind the Education Reform movement touted by the American Legislative Exchange Program and the U.S. Department of Education. No one is even pretending anymore that their reforms will raise student achievement or reduce class and race inequities. Since the reforms are accompanied by draconian budget cuts that raise class size and dramatically reduce arts sports and science programs which keep students motivated, they wouldn’t improve student outcomes even if they were actually designed to do so, or were capable of doing sounder ideal conditions.

So since current economic conditions are far from ideal and the reforms won’t ever realize their original objective, which was to improve student achievement, why are political leaders going ahead with them full steam

1. They save money. Every time you replace a public school with a charter school or initiate a school turnaround program which requires you to replace half of the teaching staff, you end up dramatically reducing budget outlays for pensions and salaries both in the short run and the long run. Privatization and firing of veteran teachers is a huge benefit to states facing budget deficits. Who cares if they make so called “failing schools” worse and end up increasing gaps in achievement and attendance between schools in wealthy and poor neighborhoods.

2. The make money for private interests. Increasing the number of tests makes money for those who produce the tests and those who create software to use the results to assess teacher performance. Creation of charter schools also puts profits in the pockets of school management companies and even hedge funds who invest in charter school construction.

3. They create jobs for the children of the elite. At a time when youth unemployment is at an all time high and there is no longer a national teacher shortage, firing veteran teachers through school turnaround programs creates jobs for young people from elite backgrounds in programs like Teach for America, who otherwise would not be able to get teaching positions. Who cares if the people being fired are often Black and Latino, and from the neighborhoods they teach and most of those being hired are white and from wealthy suburbs. We all know we are living in a post racial society and that the race and class of teachers doesn’t matter, right?

2 comments:

Joan J. Strong said...

I don't agree that Charter Schools, in full context, save money. They merely disguise budget cuts.

In our case, they are very cruel budget cuts: on special-needs kids.

Here in our District in Los Altos, CA, Bullis Charter School is taking money from our public schools in two ways.

First, by precluding our District from state funding for each child, the "tax" each normal child must pay for special-needs kids and other legally mandated items is concentrated on the remaining non-charter students in our District. We have a parcel tax (which, unbelievably, the Charter here fought) which partially makes up the difference, but not fully.

Second, in above-average districts like ours, we can rely somewhat on parent donations. The Charter school here gets $5000/child per year from parents. Although our District's foundation helps a lot, the average donation here is only about $550 and only 40 parents in our District donate at the $5000 level which every single Charter parent does.

So in short, the Charter school here concentrates all of the richest parents and spits out the special-needs kids to the normal District, leaving the non-rich parents to pay for all of that.

And you know what the kicker is? This defacto private school is tax deductible!

This madness needs to stop.

Upoma said...

Thanks for the post. This is really a great work I think. Even with handsome income, many people fail to save a penny. Thant's why saving money is called financial literature and everyone of us want to know how to save money. To ensure bright future, I always try to save money.