Who Should Pay for Public Education?
Short answer: The public.
Short rationale: Public education is a public good. When it’s funded by taxes, and oversight is provided via elected boards, there is, at least nominally, a backstop against corruption and egregious inequity, and there is a public mechanism for expressing dissatisfaction as well as suggestions for improvement.
Does this always work out perfectly? Of course not. Hahahahhaha.
Does this then mean that perennially strapped public education should be open to ‘improvement’ plans funded by the very rich?
No. Because billionaires and their foundations have something other than the public good in mind when they offer school districts millions to follow a plan that sounds good to funders. Furthermore, there is no backstop against things going horribly wrong, once they’ve accepted the money and conditions, before the billionaire pulls out and claims that it’s the district’s fault that millions have been squandered.
See: Newark, New Jersey.
Foundations are not hoping to have enough money to send all the fifth graders to camp, or rebuild the orchestra program, or provide more modern science equipment. Billionaires and their organizations aren’t interested in small-potatoes needs. They want Big Sexy Ideas—like gutting tens of thousands of tailor-made local curricula (easily dismissed as a ‘patchwork’) and replacing them with national standards (which somehow will evolve into a ‘more rigorous’ national curriculum).
They want freedom (for schools to teach Creation ‘Science’)! They want accountability (which always translates, somehow, into more data, prone to errors, CONTINUE READING: Who Should Pay for Public Education? | Teacher in a strange land
