In his wrong-headed and wrongly defended piece promoting school choice, economic consultant Larry Kaufman asks what’s wrong with school choice. Well, Larry, here’s your answer. School choice shows a fundamental lack of understanding to the purpose of public education by ignoring the effects of the privatized-style system of school choice. And, being a former educator, I believe I have a slight touch more insight into the perils of school choice than, say, a professional economist who never taught fifth grade as far as I can tell.
First, we have to acknowledge school choice is by definition a private school model, which Larry doesn't do. He says that school choice isn't privatization. Now, parents are given a check by the state and then schools, all schools - private, public, religious, online, doens't matter - presumably compete for those dollars. Competing for dollars is a private, business style model. It's pretty simple.
Now, how exactly they will they compete is never outlined by school choice advocates. The simple belief is that they compete by being better than their competitors by touting achievement, test scores, and success rates. If that were the case and we actually responded to our sensible angels like that, we'd all drive Volvos for their safety and everyone would eat vegetables instead of soda and wads of fried meat.
So how schools compete will be with famous graduates or maybe tailoring education tracts to specific audiences to lure them in, such a strong football school or focusing on teaching a particular political bent to history and science. Promising more "family time," things like that. The goal of the education shifts then from simply educating the students the best you can to manipulating a slice of the public into believing your school is the best school for their children in order to financially survive and crush the competition, while providing an education suited to the brand sold. To suggest this is anything other than a privatized model is ridiculous. To suggest that the concept of education does not suffer when we stop trying to create the education we need and focus instead on creating the education we want to buy is foolish. We'll wind up with the fried meat wad version of education that makes us feel good and that we agree with and that's all. (Assuming math doesn't get real sexy in the future.) It'll provide the critical thinking opportunities available in your average comments section of a news story because schools will be afraid to challenge anyone from their customer pools. Yes, some schools will be brave, and they may be rewarded, but how many parents would really be willing to send their kids to schools that will challenge their beliefs...and how many administrators would be willing to take a chance on that bravery, or will they give up and chase the dollars?
Now, how exactly they will they compete is never outlined by school choice advocates. The simple belief is that they compete by being better than their competitors by touting achievement, test scores, and success rates. If that were the case and we actually responded to our sensible angels like that, we'd all drive Volvos for their safety and everyone would eat vegetables instead of soda and wads of fried meat.
So how schools compete will be with famous graduates or maybe tailoring education tracts to specific audiences to lure them in, such a strong football school or focusing on teaching a particular political bent to history and science. Promising more "family time," things like that. The goal of the education shifts then from simply educating the students the best you can to manipulating a slice of the public into believing your school is the best school for their children in order to financially survive and crush the competition, while providing an education suited to the brand sold. To suggest this is anything other than a privatized model is ridiculous. To suggest that the concept of education does not suffer when we stop trying to create the education we need and focus instead on creating the education we want to buy is foolish. We'll wind up with the fried meat wad version of education that makes us feel good and that we agree with and that's all. (Assuming math doesn't get real sexy in the future.) It'll provide the critical thinking opportunities available in your average comments section of a news story because schools will be afraid to challenge anyone from their customer pools. Yes, some schools will be brave, and they may be rewarded, but how many parents would really be willing to send their kids to schools that will challenge their beliefs...and how many administrators would be willing to take a chance on that bravery, or will they give up and chase the dollars?
Here is where school choice unravels as a statewide model for public schools further, while ignoring the drastic shift in focus away from actual education to a commodized education detailed above for the time being. Let’s start small and seemingly inconsequential with a worry of a statewide school-choice model. Schools would be forced to advertise in a variety of media to get the customers/students in the doors.
Honestly, how else will a public know which are the “good” schools and which are the” bad” schools? And what choice will a school have but to advertise especially if another school can afford to advertise? And would attack ads be allowed, like some kind of daisy-and-the-mushroom-cloud-
Honestly, how else will a public know which are the “good” schools and which are the” bad” schools? And what choice will a school have but to advertise especially if another school can afford to advertise? And would attack ads be allowed, like some kind of daisy-and-the-mushroom-cloud-
The checks will undoubtedly cover “tuition” for the student and end there. The amount of this tuition check will surely be a political tool, going up and down at the whims and vagaries of whichever party is in charge, but it won’t cover the actual cost of the education that can be guaranteed due to our irrational phobia of taxes, but apparent acquiescence to fees. While I'm thinking of this, you also know that eventually the voucher would be a government entitlement sought to be cut entirely by Republicans. There is no explicit guarantee of an education in the Bill of Rights, so clearly The Founders wouldn't have wanted us to educate anyone. You can hear that just as clearly as me, right? Sean Hannity. He'll say it. He may have already said it for all I know.
Public schools already charge ancillary fees to cover expenses for things like books, but if they are competing for state dollars, the cost of that competition will surely be passed on to the parents through a variety of fees to pay for that advertising or any number of cleverly worded levies to pay for programs meant to lure students into the schools. I bet they’ll be called “enrichment fees.” Regardless of how the amount is packaged, the cost of a marketed “good” education will surely be higher than what is paid now by parents just so the schools can try to compete. And I bet right now at the best private schools the price for tuition per pupil is higher than public school students. I may be wrong on this, I have no numbers to back me up, but even if you gave the vouchers to everyone, to cover the costs of one of these dream schools we picture in our minds when we think "private school" (like something with ivy on brick walls and smart future-y furniture inside) would far exceed the voucher amount, so what struggling economic family could afford the overage for tuition beyond the voucher. Those who can't afford that extra bit of money go where, exactly? Cheap schools? You really want to make the creation of "cheap schools" a goal because undoubtedly "cheap schools" would need to be created since not everyone could afford the extra tuition for the good schools.
Public schools already charge ancillary fees to cover expenses for things like books, but if they are competing for state dollars, the cost of that competition will surely be passed on to the parents through a variety of fees to pay for that advertising or any number of cleverly worded levies to pay for programs meant to lure students into the schools. I bet they’ll be called “enrichment fees.” Regardless of how the amount is packaged, the cost of a marketed “good” education will surely be higher than what is paid now by parents just so the schools can try to compete. And I bet right now at the best private schools the price for tuition per pupil is higher than public school students. I may be wrong on this, I have no numbers to back me up, but even if you gave the vouchers to everyone, to cover the costs of one of these dream schools we picture in our minds when we think "private school" (like something with ivy on brick walls and smart future-y furniture inside) would far exceed the voucher amount, so what struggling economic family could afford the overage for tuition beyond the voucher. Those who can't afford that extra bit of money go where, exactly? Cheap schools? You really want to make the creation of "cheap schools" a goal because undoubtedly "cheap schools" would need to be created since not everyone could afford the extra tuition for the good schools.
Cost of education does not get at the heart of the issue yet either, but we’re circling down to it, and we can see how a school choice movement ripples out to effect more than just being allowed to be a good school for your child. Let’s think of the students. Presumably, school choice would let parents send their kids to whichever school they want and equally presumably they would choose the best school. It does stand to reason that a good majority would choose the best school to send their kids. However, that “best school” simply will not take all of those who applied. It can’t. It’s bad business.
Their reputation and revenue stream is at stake with every child admitted. Enrollments at the best schools would be capped artificially. The best schools will have admittance tests surely to control their brand and image. So, ultimately, “school choice” will shift the power to these select schools to choose which students get the premium education sought by everyone. I get that this is a bit of doomsday prediction and I don’t think that it would happen overnight, but down the road, as competition stiffens and schools struggle to stay afloat, why would they take a risk on the kid with poor reading skills, or a diagnosed learning disability, or parents who may not have the money to pay the enrichment fees or maybe the one kid who could change their student/pupil ratio.
Also this cost to bring school to market greatly benefits private schools with endowments and private education firms already in the business. Your local school will fail simply because they won't have the financial stability to stay afloat, or the pot of money to design, advertise and implement the programs needed to attract people. It will be bought by Kaplan or a private university type venture, they'll slap the logo over the front of the school - erasing a small bit of local history that comes with public school names , unless they go with the "brought to you by" route of naming rights, like "Samuel Gompers Elementary: A Division of EduDyne" or some crud like that. Assuming that the school won't be dissolved in favor of online education, which would be substantially cheaper to run, though far, far less useful. (Hard to teach things like sharing online & teamwork online to grade schoolers since they won't have that concrete experience of it.)
Their reputation and revenue stream is at stake with every child admitted. Enrollments at the best schools would be capped artificially. The best schools will have admittance tests surely to control their brand and image. So, ultimately, “school choice” will shift the power to these select schools to choose which students get the premium education sought by everyone. I get that this is a bit of doomsday prediction and I don’t think that it would happen overnight, but down the road, as competition stiffens and schools struggle to stay afloat, why would they take a risk on the kid with poor reading skills, or a diagnosed learning disability, or parents who may not have the money to pay the enrichment fees or maybe the one kid who could change their student/pupil ratio.
Also this cost to bring school to market greatly benefits private schools with endowments and private education firms already in the business. Your local school will fail simply because they won't have the financial stability to stay afloat, or the pot of money to design, advertise and implement the programs needed to attract people. It will be bought by Kaplan or a private university type venture, they'll slap the logo over the front of the school - erasing a small bit of local history that comes with public school names , unless they go with the "brought to you by" route of naming rights, like "Samuel Gompers Elementary: A Division of EduDyne" or some crud like that. Assuming that the school won't be dissolved in favor of online education, which would be substantially cheaper to run, though far, far less useful. (Hard to teach things like sharing online & teamwork online to grade schoolers since they won't have that concrete experience of it.)
The end game of school choice limits the access to the quality public education even more than the current system by its cost via additional fees and enrollment caps used to help keep the schools economically viable.
In that lies the true devil of school choice. Public education is about providing every child that walks into that door. It doesn't matter about race, religion, parental political affiliation, or anything. Every child deserves the best education. And the best education isn't necessarily the education that they - or their parents - want. For example, very, very few people want geometry. The critical thinking, problem solving and math skills that result from geometry, they want, but how many people realize that? How many more people will go, "Pthh! I don't use geometry and I'm just fine! I want my son to be an engineer or a doctor, not a geometer!" How many literature, history, social studies programs would be excised in favor hunting classes since that's what will bring students and therefore dollars? How many passions will remain unstirred because some school was picked by a parent to not challenge or expose the student to a variety of views?
By the way, school choice does not ensure the things that plague schools will go away. School choice does not address how to fix low test scores. School choice does not address how to fix achievement inequality. School choice does not address violence/drugs/gangs in schools. It does nothing but swirls the money around into different hands. How does that help? It will, if anything, perpetuate all the bad parts of the current education system where some schools seem destined to succeed due to community & monetary support not available in other areas and those in bad areas economically and socially will continue to fail. The poors will get the Wal-Mart schools, the riches get the William Sonoma schools. Same as it ever was.
Schools are a product of the community around them. No more, no less. Fixing schools means fixing communities. You cannot fix schools in a vacuum, or dealing only with them. It's treating a symptom not the cause. And school choice isn't even an appropriate medicine to take to even sort of fix education if you're going to treat it without going after trying to establish larger societal issues like community stability.
By the way, school choice does not ensure the things that plague schools will go away. School choice does not address how to fix low test scores. School choice does not address how to fix achievement inequality. School choice does not address violence/drugs/gangs in schools. It does nothing but swirls the money around into different hands. How does that help? It will, if anything, perpetuate all the bad parts of the current education system where some schools seem destined to succeed due to community & monetary support not available in other areas and those in bad areas economically and socially will continue to fail. The poors will get the Wal-Mart schools, the riches get the William Sonoma schools. Same as it ever was.
Schools are a product of the community around them. No more, no less. Fixing schools means fixing communities. You cannot fix schools in a vacuum, or dealing only with them. It's treating a symptom not the cause. And school choice isn't even an appropriate medicine to take to even sort of fix education if you're going to treat it without going after trying to establish larger societal issues like community stability.
If you want to fix schools, the solution is to is to mimic what some charter schools have done that actually addresses education. Lengthen the school year. Lengthen the school day. Keep the kids in there longer, that's the goal. Higher standards, more pressure and all that doesn't make sense. If you want better education, you have to teach them more. It's impossibly simple and it actually addresses education itself. There's the benefits of the students not losing stuff to long pointless summer breaks. Also the school days aren't blown up by the leakages and sucks on time that happens every single day so there's more time for subjects. It gives teachers a chance to be a bit more innovative and cover more ground. It would also probably allow for less homework for the kids because they could maybe get more out of the classroom time (if used wisely).
Lookit, I know all the pitfalls of the longer day & year arguments in terms of cost. If you want good schools, you have to pay for it one way or the other. We can't hop up and down demanding the best for the price we want to spend. If that was the case, I would have a somehow American-made BMW that cost me a nickel, but that doesn't make sense. The best costs. It always does, it always will. Lengthen the school year & day and pay for it with higher taxes. Either we want the best or we don't. If we don't, we got to be honest about the reason.
There's also the issue the bad teacher issue. We treat this problem entirely wrong. Pay teachers more and there would be fewer bad teachers. We get pissy because a small section of the teachers are bad and we react by cutting all of their salaries or just making it hard on all teachers because we don't like that one cruddy biology teacher we had in 7th grade, so by god, all teachers everywhere must suffer. Because of that behavior, the talented don't go in to teacher. And you wind up with the talent pool we have, which is still full with a great many effective, kind, patient and compassionate teachers, but more would be drawn to it for higher pay. Again, yes, it will cost you in taxes, but good. You want the best? Right? Gotta pay for it. A nickel won't buy you a Beamer, no matter how much you whine.
We got to talk about school accountability as well, and with that the answer is value-added testing. If there must be a test, then that's the only test that makes sense for teachers. Teachers help raise and shape students and provided much more lasting impacts on a student's life than just whether or not they did well on a single test. This is like testing a parent for effective parenting and basing that parenting skill off one test toward the end of some select years of their life. But you're going to test them about math to decide if they're a good parent.
Now, I understand the need for accountability because we have a hard time trusting the better angels of our nature when it comes to success in our jobs. However we seem to be perfectly cool with trusting people with loaded weapons wherever the hell they want to go...but we won't trust a teacher to the their job....isn't that interesting. But, it just makes too much sense to gauge a teacher's value on the growth made over a year rather that one moment in time. This kind of test would probably need to be yearly, and to properly asses things like the growth and impact of teachers so each district is able to fully understand the data, it will cost more. But again, nickels and Beamers.
I took all this time to say that school choice is a bogus and a false choice. It does nothing. It fixes nothing. It addresses no problems of education. What's the flipping use?
Lookit, I know all the pitfalls of the longer day & year arguments in terms of cost. If you want good schools, you have to pay for it one way or the other. We can't hop up and down demanding the best for the price we want to spend. If that was the case, I would have a somehow American-made BMW that cost me a nickel, but that doesn't make sense. The best costs. It always does, it always will. Lengthen the school year & day and pay for it with higher taxes. Either we want the best or we don't. If we don't, we got to be honest about the reason.
There's also the issue the bad teacher issue. We treat this problem entirely wrong. Pay teachers more and there would be fewer bad teachers. We get pissy because a small section of the teachers are bad and we react by cutting all of their salaries or just making it hard on all teachers because we don't like that one cruddy biology teacher we had in 7th grade, so by god, all teachers everywhere must suffer. Because of that behavior, the talented don't go in to teacher. And you wind up with the talent pool we have, which is still full with a great many effective, kind, patient and compassionate teachers, but more would be drawn to it for higher pay. Again, yes, it will cost you in taxes, but good. You want the best? Right? Gotta pay for it. A nickel won't buy you a Beamer, no matter how much you whine.
We got to talk about school accountability as well, and with that the answer is value-added testing. If there must be a test, then that's the only test that makes sense for teachers. Teachers help raise and shape students and provided much more lasting impacts on a student's life than just whether or not they did well on a single test. This is like testing a parent for effective parenting and basing that parenting skill off one test toward the end of some select years of their life. But you're going to test them about math to decide if they're a good parent.
Now, I understand the need for accountability because we have a hard time trusting the better angels of our nature when it comes to success in our jobs. However we seem to be perfectly cool with trusting people with loaded weapons wherever the hell they want to go...but we won't trust a teacher to the their job....isn't that interesting. But, it just makes too much sense to gauge a teacher's value on the growth made over a year rather that one moment in time. This kind of test would probably need to be yearly, and to properly asses things like the growth and impact of teachers so each district is able to fully understand the data, it will cost more. But again, nickels and Beamers.
I took all this time to say that school choice is a bogus and a false choice. It does nothing. It fixes nothing. It addresses no problems of education. What's the flipping use?
