Viewpoints: Reading, writing and revenue: New education model
PUBLISHED FRIDAY, MAY. 13, 2011
American education is going to be reformed until it rolls over and begs for mercy. Vouchers! Guns on campus! Just the other day, the Florida state Legislature took a giant step toward ending the scourge of droopy drawers in high school by upping the penalties for underwear-exposing pants.
Today, let's take a look at the privatization craze and the conviction that there is nothing about molding young minds that can't be improved by the profit motive.
Enrollment in for-profit colleges has ballooned to almost 2 million, propelled by more than $25 billion in federal student loans, many of which are apparently never going to be repaid. More than 700 public K-12 schools around the country are now managed by for-profit companies.
Last week, in Ohio, the state House went for the whole hog and approved legislation that would allow for-profit businesses to open up their own taxpayer-financed charter schools.
"It takes the public out of public education," complained Bill Sims of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
This exciting new plan, which seemed to have been inserted into the state budget bill by a magical invisible hand, would also reduce oversight. It got a rave review in the Columbus Dispatch from an op-ed contributor named Thomas Needles, who cheered legislators for trying to end the "drip-drop of wrongheaded regulation" of charter schools.
Needles is a consultant for White Hat Management, the largest company currently managing charter schools in Ohio – and with none too great a record, according to the National Education Policy Center, which said that only 2 percent of the schools White Hat runs have scored well on yearly progress tests. The owner of White Hat is a gynormous donor to the state Republican Party. Not that that would make any difference. Just saying.
So that's the path-breaking privatization news in Ohio. Now let's take a look at Texas, which has been leading the way in putting for-profit companies in charge of certifying teachers.
"Very interesting and very disturbing," said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford who studies teacher certification issues.
Darling-Hammond says that when the federal government began demanding certified teachers in every classroom, Texas was among the states that responded by creating alternative certification programs, some of which have