The failures of for-profit K-12 schools
Money and more money.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Here’s a smart look at the spotty record of for-profit schools, by Larry Cuban, a high school social studies teacher for 14 years, a district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA), and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His latest book is “Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice: Change without Reform in American Education.” This post appeared on his School Reform and Classroom Practice blog.
By Larry Cuban
For all of the three-decade hype about how business practices applied to K-12 schools will make them more efficient and high performing, a short hop and skip through the past half-century of for-profit companies failing in the education market might illustrate how applying market-driven practices to improve schools and make money at the same time is hard to do for even the shrewdest of entrepreneurs.
In 1969, Behavioral Research Laboratory, contracted with the largely black Gary (IN) district to raise test scores in reading and math in the Banneker elementary school.
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The civics test native Americans flunked — but immigrants passed
The failure of Congress to accomplish the basic task of funding the federal government — thus forcing it to close down this week — provides us with a new opportunity to look at the miserable state of civics literacy in the country.
A study undertaken by the Center for the Study of the American Dream at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, is instructive. Last year the center took the basic civic literacy test (see some questions below) that immigrants must pass in order to become American citizens and gave it to native Americans.
In 2010, 97.5 percent of immigrants taking the test passed, according to this report by the center on their study. One in three native Americans failed, based on a standard of getting six out of 10 questions correctly. If the pass rate had been 7 out of 10, a full half
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