Our political leaders are pushing an agenda that is wrong. The research is clear that fast-food restaurants vary dramatically in their quality. Some are excellent, some are awful, some are run by terrific leaders, some are run by incompetents, some use their resources wisely, some are wasteful and/or greedy.
Those promoting the privatization of government cafeterias are blinded by free-market ideology. They refuse to pay attention to evidence, whether it be research or the accumulating anecdotal evidence of misbehavior, incompetence, fraud, greed, and chicanery that the free market facilitates.She has a point. Poorly performing fast food chains never go out of business. They keep raising their prices in the teeth of a recession. They offer an inferior product to the standards-based government cafeterias which only sell healthy and nutritious foods. And if it weren’t for stringent government standards, fast-food restaurants would have you eating pet food. The one thing is noticed on my recent trip to Massachusetts is how much better the food was in the government run or single-contractor rest stop restaurants. Thankfully, government cafeterias are public institutions, so they’ll never go away.
Of course, that was a bizarro world post from Ravitch. She was really railing against the semi-free market charter schools.
Update: There is no anecdotal evidence of misbehavior, incompetence, fraud, greed, and chicanery on the part of non-charter public schools, so we're safe for the time being at least.
11 comments:
What Ravitch said:
Those promoting the privatization of American public education are blinded by free-market ideology. They refuse to pay attention to evidence, whether it be research or the accumulating anecdotal evidence of misbehavior, incompetence, fraud, greed, and chicanery that the free market facilitates.
This is said after she has cited a list of evidence to support her point. That sentence is the only reference in the blog to "free market." The blog is titled, Are Charters the Silver Bullet?
Ravitch answers, "No." Seems to me that that's the keyed response. Would you answer, "Yes", Ken.
The thing is, schools are not a market.Charter schools are financed with public funds, and they are also regulated. Some Charters are lavishly subsidized with private funds.
Dick, Ravitch's argument is a confused mess. Clearly, she doesn't understand how the market works.
Her silver bullet argument is a strawman. No one is arguing that charter schools are a silver bullet.
Charter schools are not a free market. But there are more market aspects to charter schools than traditional public schools which have none. the question is only whether there are sufficient market qualities in charter schools such that a real market for school services is created.
Are you happy with the way the financial "free market" has been working, Ken. Do you believe Alan Greenspan was wrong in admitting he was mistaken in believing it is "how the world works"?
Ravitch's argument is a confused mess.
Hmm. I don't it so. Could it bes something you ate in one of those cafeterias?
With "Charter Schools" being one of the four pillars of the $4.35 billion "grant" package, if that's "straw" I'd like a bale of it.
the question is only whether there are sufficient market qualities in charter schools such that a real market for school services is created
As long as instruction remains a black box, all we are ever going to see in any paart of the el-hi enterprise is "variability." My crystal bass says that the combination of the general economy and Information Technoogy are going to force dramatic changes is both financing and operations. The current choices are all student and school personnel-specific. They can't be reliably replicated.
There is better methodology but little or no current interest in such alternatives.
We've been down this road before, Dick. The financial markets are many knowledge commentators believe that the bad regulations played a not insignificant role in the debacle. This is a bad counterexample.
I thought you were for public funding of public schools, i.e., charter schools? If so then you can't complain that charter schools educating the public are receiving public money for providing education services to the public.
Variability is a good start. Throw in some parental choice and the willingness to let failing charters actually fail and we might get somewhere.
OK. Free market ideologists will never change their belief system, so further tis/taint about the financial system is bootless.
Back to reckoning with ed.
Variability is a good start.
Not! Variability in instructional accomplishments is neither a good start nor a good middle. And it can't be a good ending.
To teach all kids to read demands no variability in the outcome. That was the promise of No Child Left Behind, remember? The NCLB commitment has now been abandoned as "unreasonable." The soft bigotry of low expectations has given way to the hard bigotry of impossible expectations; expecting that all kids will graduate from college or that high school graduates will be ready for careers that don't exist--by 2020.
All kids be taught to read--by 2014--but not in the way we've gone about the instruction and testing.
let failing charters actually fail and we might get somewhere.
Ravitch's point is that charter schools are now actually failing. So are all schools, public and private. That's what the bell curve of test scores shows us.
When schools fail to teach kids how to read and to achieve other academic accomplishments, the instructional failure puts the failed kids at risk. Worse, the failed kids and their parents are blamed for the instructional failure.
Both teachers and kids are qualified. The failure is with the unaccountables--the govt-acad-pub GAP at the top of the EdChain.
Dick, there are many ways of reaching educational goals via different instructional paths. You have many options if you are teaching high SES kids, less options if you are teaching low SES kids. So, the presence of variability is not necessarily a bad thing. Some parents might prefer method A. Some parents might prefer method B. Does it matter that both methods are being taught if the same end point is reached?
Ravitch's point is that charter schools are now actually failing.
That's a feature, not a bug. Every market is littered with the failed competitors whose business model was unsuccessful. The market merely shifts resources, via customer choice, from these failed competitors to the winners.
As you know, education is rife with bad instructional theories with conflicting "research." It shouldn't be surprising that many charter school operators (who generally by regulation must have an accredited educator at the helm running the show (another example of bad regulations causing market failure)) are selecting poorly from the available menu of instructional alternatives.
When schools fail to teach kids how to read and to achieve other academic accomplishments, the instructional failure puts the failed kids at risk. Worse, the failed kids and their parents are blamed for the instructional failure.
No doubt, but we know of no better way of weeding out the winners from the losers. Highly centralized control typically generates even worse results than do markets.
Your last sentence is equivalent of McDonalds blaming its customers for its poor sales of burgers. That doesn't work in market.
I deleted the post because of spelling errors. The post attempted to counter some of your points, but we can sweat the small stuff and skip to the chase:
but we know of no better way of weeding out the winners from the losers
How long will it take for the (alleged) "free market to do this? And meanwhile, what of the instructionally-damaged kids?
There is methodology for weeding out ineffective instructional programs (instructional product/protocols). But the belief is that "Programs don't matter. Only the teacher counts."
That logic is ludicrous. The belief serves only to protect the interests of the unaccountable govt-acad-pub GAP and the self-proclaimed "educational reformers."
Ravitch has dropped only one shoe: The "standardized tests" half of the movement. She still retains faith in the "standards" half, but the two elements are of one. Together, they leapfrog instruction, shedding no light on the instruction a student or students have received to date or on the best course fo future instruction.
I don't know for sure, Dick. I'm guessing a long time, but, if history is any guide, that time will be shorter than all the alternatives.
Hey, Ken. You dodged the first question. But how about the second question?
You're reading a different history and using a different crystal ball than I am.
The Federal-Corporate partnership doesn't realize it, but they've put in play the Mother of All Education Natural Experiments.
Follow the Money.
Financial audits and program evaluations of RttT loom. As one example of a comparison that can be made: All the states (excepting AK and TX) are committed to implementing the four RttT pillars/assurances.
New York got a grant award of circa $700 million. California applied for what could have been circa $1 billion. CA got zip; but never mind. With a $3 million foundation grant CA is going to implement the "reforms" proposed in it's RttT application.
Does anyone think there are going to be any differences in test results as a consequence of what the states said they were going to do or of what they are doing in the race?
If anyone does so think, I've got a number of Common Core Bridges, I'll sell (in the free market) real cheap.
Meanwhile, an International Natural Education Experiment is also in play. The US is playing from the RttT playbook that strings instruction in English Language Arts from to 12.
Across the pond, the UK Coalition government is playing from a very different book. They are committed to teaching all their kids to read and to determine that schools and teachers have done the job by administering a simple Alphabetic Code test to kids at the end of Year(Grade) 2.
If anyone wants to bet on the US in this competition, I'm ready to take the bet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/business/14mortgage.html?th&emc=th
Hey Ken, I'm curious. Is this an example of the kind of "free market" you're talking about?
The banks blame the Feds for over-regulating. But could it be that the financial employees aren't unionized, they don't have any unions to thwart "reform"?
Post a Comment