CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Reform vs. Democracy

CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Reform vs. Democracy

Ed Reform vs. Democracy

It was not that long ago that I wrote a piece about how school choice, by shifting the locus of control for the education purse strings, tends to undermine democractic processes. After all, if only parents of school age children, or only rich folks who contribute to tax credit scholarships, get to decide which schools get paid, then the non-parent taxpayers who are footing the bills don't really have much say, and the duly-elected school board has nothing much to do or say, either. School choice is, often, literally taxation without representation (a topic that I could swear has come up before in US history).

Still, it's not always so subtle.

One of the most famously unsubtle incidents would be Reed Hastings (Netflix), who in 2014 told the California School Boards Association in fairly clear terms that elected school boards were a scourge and should be done away with. Hastings has been plenty active in the charter sector, managing to help push through the California law that not only did away with charter caps, but made it possible to run a chain of charters with just one (unelected) board.

But education reform has generally found democracy to be an obstruction. After all, if Bill Gates thinks he knows how to fix education, why should he have to run for some sort of public office when he can just grab power and finance cooperation? Much of ed reform has been powered by movers and shakers and corporate power guys who like (and undoubtedly feel justified by) the all-powerful CEO model. As Hastings once put it when discussing Netflix, "We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team. Netflix leaders hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars in every position."

These guys hate unions and government regulation for the same reason guys like Carnegie and Rockefeller hated them-- not just because they cost them money, but because they hampered their ability to be visionary leaders who could control all the elements of their business and make the corporation operate CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Ed Reform vs. Democracy