The False Markets of Market Based Reforms
Posted on March 1, 2014
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I’ve not spent a great deal of time talking about “corporate reform,” “privatization” or “market based reform,” mainly because I find these labels unproductive and oversimplified. Most of which occurs in our public and private sectors (also a simplification) and provision of public and private goods and services is far more nuanced – well beyond simple classification. Further, as I have noted on a few occasions, the rhetoric which emanates from one side or the other of these ideological debates is often entirely inconsistent. See for example, my explanation that strategies being promoted for public schools as derivative of successful private sector industry are anything but. That which is pitched as “corporate reform” is little more than failed private sector management.
A similar hypocrisy has been nagging at me lately, and I’ve touched on it, in part, on a few previous posts (here’s one). That is, there are sweeping claims that many of the policies being advanced these days are about capitalizing on the virtues of free markets – that we are trying to use the rationality that emerges from less regulated private sector markets to achieve more efficient production of high quality schools.
Enter charter schools and alternative pathways to the teaching profession.
Two interconnected strategies that are often discussed under this umbrella are a) the expansion of charter schooling and b) reduction of barriers to entry to the teaching profession through