Follow Shanker Blog
Recent Posts
- Character Education
- Can I Have Some Faculty With My College?
- For Many Teachers, Reform Means Higher Risk, Lower Rewards
- The Stability Of Ohio’s School Value-Added Ratings And Why It Matters
- The Education Reporter’s Dilemma
- Public Servants Versus Private Contractors … Again
- What Are “Middle Class Schools”?
- Be Careful What You Think The Public Thinks About Tenure
- Collective Bargaining Teaches Democratic Values, Activism
- Serious Misconduct
- Revisiting The Merits Of Merit Pay
- The Real Charter School Experiment
- In Ohio, Charter School Expansion By Income, Not Performance
- How Cross-Sectional Are Cross-Sectional Testing Data?
- Labor In High School Textbooks: Bias, Neglect And Invisibility
Archives
Our Mission
Education
- Albert Shanker Institute
- All Things Education
- Best of the Ed Blogs (NEPC)
- Bridging Differences
- Brown Center (Brookings)
- CALDER (Urban Institute)
- Center on Education and the Workforce
- Consortium for Public Research in Education
- Core Knowledge
- EdNext Blog
- Education International
- Education Next
- Education Writers Association
- EdWize
- Faculty and College Excellence (FACE)
- Failing Schools
- Flypaper
- Gotham Schools
- InterACT
- Jersey Jazzman
- Joanne Jacobs
- Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day
- Mathematica Education
- Modern Education
- National Center for Education Statistics
- National Center on Performance Incentives
- National Education Policy Center
- RAND Education
- Rick Hess Straight Up
- School Finance 101
- Schools Matter
- Sherman Dorn
- Teacher Beat (EdWeek)
- The Quick and the Ed
- This Week in Education
- Valerie Strauss – The Answer Sheet
Labor
- A. Phillip Randolph Institute
- AFL-CIO
- AFT Facebook
- Albert Shanker Institute
- American Federation of Teachers
- American Rights at Work
- Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
- Association for Union Democracy
- China Labour Bulletin
- Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
- Education International
- EdWize
- LabourStart
Democracy
- Albert Shanker Institute
- Center for Democracy and Election Management
- Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy
- Center for the Study of the American Electorate
- CIVNET
- Congressional-Executive Commission on China
- Freedom House
- Journal of Democracy
- National Endowment for Democracy
- Solidarity Center
Subscribe Via RSS
Character Education
I’m always uncomfortable with personal accusations in our education debate, and they come from both “sides.” For instance, I don’t like hearing accusations that market-based reformers are “profiteers.” The implication is that these people seek to dismantle or otherwise alter the public education system for their own economic advantage.
It’s true that a significant proportion of market-based reformers support various forms of privatization, such as vouchers, and that this support is in part based on the power of competition and the profit motive to increase efficiency. It’s also true that there are some who stand to profit personally off certain policy changes. But the overwhelming majority of people on the “reform side” have no financial skin in the game, and even those who do might actually still care about education and children. You can and should disagree with them, if you’re so inclined, but accusing them of being motivated solely by personal financial gain, or even implying as much, could well be unfair, but, more importantly, it contributes nothing of substance to the debate.
On the flip side of that coin, however, is the endlessly-repeated “we care about children, not adults” narrative. This little nugget is a common message from the market-based reform crowd. Most recently, Ben Austin, head of a pro-charter school group, was on a panel at NBC’s Education Nation, and repeated the talking point several times. In
