It Is Spring and Big-Money Conferences on School “Reform” Bloom
I was educated in the public schools of small town Havre, Montana, and my children were educated in the public schools of inner-ring suburban Cleveland Heights, Ohio. I am a strong believer in public education—publicly funded, universally available, required to accept all children who present themselves at the door, and accountable to the public. A public system seems to me the optimal way to balance the needs of each particular child and family with the need to create a system that secures the rights and addresses the needs of all children. While public education is not a utopia, I believe it has fewer structural flaws, from the point of view of the common good, than privatized alternatives.
How quaint seem my attitudes this month when the money blooming around privatizing public schools is far more lush than the flowers of spring. Privatization—privately managed charters, vouchers, all the private contracting that creates and services all the standardized testing, and the education technology sector—is rapidly expanding. There is money to be made and power to be wielded.
Two national conferences in the next couple of weeks demonstrate the impact of money in education this spring. Beginning yesterday, the Arizona State University and Global Silicon Valley Education Innovation Summit is meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona. Diane Ravitch quotes the sponsors of the conference: “Our founders have spent the past two decades focused on the Megatrends that are disrupting the $4 trillion global education market along with the innovators who are transforming the industry.”
The long list of speakers includes a who’s who of supporters of “corporate” education reform: Margaret Spellings (George Bush’s Secretary of Education), Penny Pritzker (portfolio school reform supporter in Chicago before she became Secretary of Commerce), Jim Shelton It Is Spring and Big-Money Conferences on School “Reform” Bloom | janresseger:
