Sadly, more than a decade of evidence and facts under both Bush and Obama don’t seem to have “taken the shine off” this “market reform” education model in the US:
When one of the biggest private education firms in Sweden went bankrupt earlier this year, it left 11,000 students in the lurch and made Stockholm rethink its pioneering market reform of the state schools system. School shutdowns and deteriorating results have taken the shine off an education model admired and emulated around the world, in Britain in particular.
“I think we have had too much blind faith in that more private schools would guarantee greater educational quality,” said Tomas Tobé, head of the parliament’s education committee and spokesman on education for the ruling Moderate party. In a country with the fastest growing economic inequality of any OECD nation, basic aspects of the deregulated school market are now being re-considered, raising questions over private sector involvement in other areas like health.
Two-decades into its free-market experiment, about a quarter of once staunchly Socialist Sweden’s secondary school students now attend publically-funded but privately run schools, almost twice the global average.Nearly half of those study at schools fully or partly owned by private equity firms.
The opposition Green Party – like the Moderates long-time supporters of privately run schools but now backing the clamp-down – issued a public apology in a Swedish daily last month headlined “Forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”. It is a cautionary tale in a market estimated to have been worth more than $400 billion worldwide in a 2010 report by the International Finance Corporation.
Sweden replaced one of the world’s most tightly regulated school systems with one of the most deregulated, leading to scandals like the 2011 case of the convicted paedophile who set up several schools quite legally.“I’ve often said it’s been easier to start an independent school than set up a hot-dog stand,” said Eva-Lis Siren, head of Lararforbundet, Sweden’s biggest teachers union.
The private schools brought in many practices once found exclusively in the corporate world, such as performance-based bonuses for staff and advertising in Stockholm’s subway system, while competition has put teachers under pressure to award higher grades and market their schools.
While it is difficult to say how, or even whether, private involvement and falling standards are linked, the NAE says there are indications the market-driven reforms have contributed to widen the gaps in school performances.The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) benchmark Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study paints a bleak picture, with Sweden now ranking below Russia in maths.
The idea that private equity firms and large corporations would run hundreds of schools was a far cry from the individual, locally-run schools envisaged at the start.
“This was something that was not … even considered in one’s wildest dreams,” said Staffan Lundh, who handled school issues in the prime minister’s office at the time and now leads evaluation at the National Agency for Education (NAE).
Where have I heard this before? In Michigan:
“The idea behind charters was to have locally run, autonomous schools that would foster innovation,” he said. “But now you have schools in Michigan that are operated by companies based as far away as Florida and California,” with a minimum of local control and using a cookie-cutter approach.
Moreover, he said, for-profit schools tend to spend less on instruction and student-support services and “much more” on administration, compared to nonprofit charters and regular public schools.
As an example, he cited National Heritage Academies, a Grand Rapids-based company that operates 71 schools across the country, including 43 in Michigan.
Budgets posted on the websites of Paramount and Kalamazoo Public Schools support Miron’s analysis about the difference in expenditures.
Those budgets indicate Paramount is spending about 47 percent of its budget on instruction this school year, compared to 62 percent at KPS. For administration, Paramount spends 16 percent of its budget compared to 7 percent for KPS. Paramount does not have bus transportation, which comprises about 5 percent of the KPS budget. Joe DiBenedetto, spokesman for National Heritage Academies, declined to talk about the company’s profit margin or the pay scales for teachers and administrators.“We do not disclose financial information on NHA, as it is a private company,” he said.
NHA is a private company when they don’t want to disclose financial information, but a public school when they want public funding. How do they make a profit? Easy. They pay teachers less.
Looking at our patched-together, fragmented, ruinously expensive health care “system” can anyone tell me why we would take an existing, universal public system and turn it into a publicly-funded private system?
How about we choose not to make this terrible mistake, because we will deeply regret it. If we lose public schools we’ll never get them back.
Ask the thousands of protesters in Chile. School privatization is a disaster there, too
Belafon
Yeah, but we’re exceptional. We’ll do it much better than those other loser countries.
/snark
Kay
@Belafon:
It’s an odd feeling, watching the desperate attempt to “reform” the health care system, while watching education reformers turn the public education system into the unreformed health care system.
I have this horrible vision of my daughter, commenting on Balloon Juice, while she watches a “public option” for K-12 schools fail in the Senate.
jl
It’s understandable that public education is under a cloud of suspicion, what with commies and pinkos like Jefferson and Madison pushing it so hard. The taint remains. And perverts like Franklin.
slippy
What’s got me shocked is the admission that it was a mistake.
In the US, people who champion total failures like this become cult heroes for their failure to achieve anything of note.
slippy
What’s got me shocked is the admission that it was a mistake.
In the US, people who champion total failures like this become cult heroes for their failure to achieve anything of note.
KG
I think there’s a place for private schools within the system, and even home schooling. But I don’t believe that there’s much of a place for for-profit institutions within the school system. Then again, I’m skeptical of for-profit companies being a part of the insurance industry.
Belafon
@slippy: And you’re not allowed to admit that you made a mistake. It’s so bad here that even your allies start thinking your weak for doing it.
Reason #12346 for why I would be a lousy politician.
KG
@slippy: well, for the last 100 years or so, American politics has been a world in which you fail upwards – kinda like Hollywood.
Kay
@KG:
Well, okay, but a non-profit insurance company isn’t the VA. It isn’t “public”, although it may be non-profit, unless we want to completely redefine that word.
rikyrah
it’s all a scam. Glad you keep on it, Kay.
PeakVT
The opposition Green Party – like the Moderates long-time supporters of privately run schools but now backing the clamp-down – issued a public apology in a Swedish daily last month headlined “Forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”.
Well, kudos for apologizing, but I’m surprised the Swedish Greens bought into it in the first place.
KG
@Kay: I simply mean that the profit motivation that defines most business models doesn’t necessarily fit with insurance or education. A lot of private schools, particularly of the religious variety, are non-profit entities. I went to a Catholic elementary school, have a lot of friends that went to Catholic high schools (and even some that went to Catholic colleges). They traditionally have provided very good educations without the profit motivation.
NotMax
The entire market reform privatization movement is, and always has been, a three-card monte scheme writ large.
The only one who benefits is the one holding the cards, who can also arrange or manipulate a seemingly successful outcome when necessary in order to pique interest in continued or expanded funding.
Gex
Anything privatized is designed to give you the lowest quality possible for what you are willing to pay. Any quality above that is revenue wasted on the product not profit. We *know* how for profit business works, why are we surprised when it ends up doing exactly what’s expected? If we lock them in so they get paid and there is no competition, we can expect a product with shitty quality.
jl
What is odd is that the BS is so obvious in the recent education reform scam. They yell about quality and performance and measures, and about how all these tests and MBA style BS will solve everything. But their approach is retrograde, and violates the principles of the whole continuous quality improvement program that has increased quality in private enterprise, at least in honest private for-profit firms who actually still make, you know, stuff, or provide services, and face competition and face consequences if they churn out garbage.
Here are some of W. Edwards Deming’s ”Deadly Diseases’ that destroy ability to improve quality in a production process:
Emphasis on short-term profits
Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
Mobility of management
Running a company on visible figures alone
Relying on technology to solve problems
Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences
Relying on quality inspection rather than improving product quality
Scam artists like Rhee and Duncan pretend to be innovative, but they are fools or tools, preaching outdated and outmoded ideas, and approaches to quality improvement and assurance that nearly sunk U.S. manufacturing decades ago. But there are a lot of corporate money daddies wandering around with cash money to dole out to the obedient tools, so why not go with the main chance?
Deming Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
PeakVT
@KG: I think there can be a place for for-profit schools, but all the funding needs to be 100% private. The danger we face (and the Swedes faced) is for-profit schools trying to latch onto government funding. Good education costs money, straight up. The requirement to turn a profit inevitably leads to cost-cutting, and teacher compensation is the main cost in any school.
scav
Only Socialists and Europeans learn from mere reality-based evidence and admit errors in judgement and implementation. We in the new world mock such crutches as we have the math and the purity, not to mention all the guns and theories.
KG
@PeakVT: maybe at the higher education level – ITT Tech and University of Phoenix have some value. But when it comes to primary and secondary education, I am much less trusting.
Kay
@jl:
It’s just the infatuation with the private sector. You know, we can have two sectors, a public and a private. We can handle that. We’ve done it thru our whole history. One is not the repudiation of the other. Partly (in my opinion) it is public sector managers worshiping the private sector. If you’re a superintendent of public schools, call yourself that. You’re not a “CEO”. There’s no shame in public work. They don’t have to run from it, or try to jam everything in the world into a “business” frame. We can have BOTH.
Anoniminous
How anybody could believe an organization whose sole purpose is “maximizing share-holder value” could create a Public Good (education) is beyond me.
Mike G
I wouldn’t send my dog to an obedience school run by a private equity firm, let alone entrust them with a child’s education.
Another Holocene Human
Don’t confuse “not for profit” with “social mission”. Plenty of “non-profits” make the people who run/control them lots-o-money.
Omnes Omnibus
Education policy is, to me, the greatest failure of the Obama administration. It is embarrassing.
Citizen_X
Why, for Pete’s sake, why? Why are bloody obvious outcomes such a shock?
Of course large corporations are going to try enter a huge new business sector. Come on, people, learn to think like a criminal…er, capitalist!
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Here’s Arne Duncan on Twitter, promoting Bain management strategies for public schools:
https://twitter.com/arneduncan
http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/building-pathways-to-school-leadership.aspx
I could not make this shit up. It’s incredible, how bad it is.
Gene108
I thought we wanted our education to be more like the Scandanavians?
Kay
@Gene108:
You won’t hear that on Morning Joe, or, actually, read it in the NYTimes. They love them some test scores, unless the results contradict the narrative.
Gene108
@Kay:
I just hear a lot about the teacher pay, small class sizes, etc in Scandinavian countries that they were a model we wanted to emulate.
I did not realize the Swedes were like the poor ghetto/rural redneck corner of Scandinavia.
Kay
@Gene108:
Also, we don’t love Finland anymore. Their scores dropped on a single standardized test. Now we love Shanghai!
Everyone over to the Shanghai corner, pronto!
Kay
@Gene108:
Finland was pushing back a little, so we dropped them as our BFF. They told us they don’t rely on standardized tests, or “choice”, and they’re all in a union. They’re union thugs. Turns out, we weren’t looking at the real Finland. We were looking at the imaginary Tom Friedman version of “Finland”, as told to him by a cabdriver.
PeakVT
@Gene108: We want it to be more like Finland’s education, though it may no longer be all the best.
jl
@Gene108:
Finland has had success with educational reform that dramatically increased its international ranking, not sure if Finland considers itself a Scandinavian country.
Finland’s recent education reform was very unlike the gimmicky ‘race to the top’, privatization efforts we’ve seen in the US.
From what I’ve read, well qualified, well educated, well paid teachers with a lot of autonomy were a big part of the plan.
jl
@PeakVT: Even with recent drop in test scores, from what I’ve read, Finland still has risen miles above where it started before reforms. I think it was very solidly mediocre, and nowhere near 12th in the world, by any standard.
Anoniminous
@jl:
How the North works cheat sheet.
(Enclicken to embiggen.)
Suffern ACE
@Gene108: only Finland. They are the ones with the high test scores. Norway and Sweden not as much.
jl
@Anoniminous: Finns I met up there say they get called Scandinavian because Sweden occupied and ran part of Finland for a long time, so they resent that name.
Also, the great dry versus wet Sauna wars.
Estonians I know happily go along with the Scandinavian tag, even though seems like they are more Finnish, but maybe because Sweden took on lots of refugees during 20th century, and maybe too much exposure to stinking drunk Finnish cheap-alcohol tourists.
rikyrah
Duncan is the one cabinet member that I have absolutely no respect for in the least.
The Fat Kate Middleton
I have avoided entering the discussions on school reform here, precisely because I was a public school teacher and union member for better than twenty-five years. Any comment I might make would require the sort of context and historical background that would make my words not so much comment as a complete article. I will only say this: NCLB was one of the worst things to ever happen to public education. Those of us who started preparing for its demands when it was initiated recognized very quickly that this was simply a method to eliminate public education and replace it with for-profit entities. There was not a teacher I talked with or learned with who did not recognize this. The old axiom holds true once again: always and always, follow the money.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@jl: Not only “a big part” – they designed and developed the plan. Their professionalism and expertise were not just acknowledged, but used to create one of the best education systems in the world. That’s a far cry from the way teachers are viewed here in the United States.
negative 1
@KG: No, they don’t and no, you can’t have for-profit schools. The model is corrupted. All incentives then become to admit the greatest amount of students, destroy teacher to student rations, fail no one, and graduate few all while coming up with new fees. ITT Tech and U Phoenix only great contributions to the education world are what community colleges would be doing if any state governments were allowed to fund education.
Kay
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
If you want to write a post on it and send it to me I’d love to have it. I’m not a teacher, as you know, but I do believe I know a privatization push when I see one, and this is one. It’s not just education of course, it’s everything; prisons, social services, the explosion in federal contracting.
I’d be happy to put up your article, if you will write it.
Mike G
@jl:
Which makes it a total nonstarter under American corporate-MBA management dogma.
A crushed, underpaid and microcontrolled frontline workforce isn’t just about money, it’s an ideology unto itself in America. Because you can’t justify bloated management salaries if it is too obvious your workers can do their jobs better without constant make-busy intervention by management jerks.
Kay
@Mike G:
Did you see where the Michigan charter spent money? On managers. It really IS a business model!
daverave
@Another Holocene Human:
The non-profit hospital chain is the perfect example… with their multi-million dollar salaries for CEOs and other top administrators. They disguise profits through the use of the Orwellian “Revenues above Operating Expenses” line on their tax returns. It’s also why they have to constantly build new, higher and higher end facilities… gotta bury those excess revenues somewhere.
Jebediah, RBG
@Kay:
There should, instead, be pride. I consider it an indictment of our culture that pursuing profit is admired, but work where the product itself (education, protecting the environment, basic scientific research, providing medical care for vets, etc.), rather than profit, is the goal and purpose, is somehow shabby and to be apologized for.
fuckwit
Thank you, Kay, for keeping up the fight and maintaining the issue of public school destruction (i.e. “privatization”) in the FP here. Your posts are excellent. I’ve followed this issue for a long time, been worried about it (and affected by it, every year… ANOTHER FUCKING BAKE SALE REALLY??) and I’m glad you are keeping the flame burning.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Kay: Thanks, Kay. Let me think about it. As I suggested in the comment, whenever I start thinking of all this, I hardly know where to begin (or where to end). I’ll give it a shot, though.
Mike G
@Jebediah, RBG:
Privately-owned profit-seeking firms may be a good way to make cars or breakfast cereal but they are really a crummy form of organization for many purposes, education among them. But you’ll get called a commie if you dare to mention such a thought in public.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@fuckwit: So true. I’m really not seeing this kind of discussion anywhere else on the major blogs (unless you consider Diane Ravitch a major blog). Which I do, of course.
http://dianeravitch.net
dmbeaster
@NotMax:
Amen. There is a simple rule for determining whether or not a privitization scheme has a chance of working (and there have been successes in non-education areas). If there is already an existing business structure and marketplace for the service in question, and the privitization is simply adding the private government operation as another component of it, it can work. When there is no pre-existing private marketplace for the same thing, it will fail badly.
Private prisons? Fail. Private schools with the mission to take on and educate ALL students? Fail. (The existing private school system is not a model for public schools since it is exclusionary). Private military? Fail. Certain capital intense and minimal personal service industries have sorta worked — think utilities where the private money is so heavy regulated that it might as well be a government-private partnership. But out here in California, I would gladly compare the track record of a public utility like DWP with PGE.
jl
@dmbeaster:
“I would gladly compare the track record of a public utility like DWP with PGE.”
Careful. Can DWP sue you for defamation?
Kay
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
That would be great. Please send me it and if we have to we’ll edit. I know what you mean, though, as far as “too much to say”. I read this stuff constantly and it’s hard to condense, because there is so much of it :)
Bill Arnold
@jl:
That Deming article is very interesting thanks, had never read it. Some of those points are in his “A Lesser Category of Obstacles” list at least according to the wikipedia article (for those who don’t look at the wiki article).
Lurking Canadian
In fairness to the Swedes, there should not be any shame in finishing behind Russia in math. Extrapolating from the Russians I have known, I’m stunned that anybody ever finishes ahead of Russia, with the possible exception of Vulcan.
Dick Move
TIME WAS… education was the product, and the students and their families were the customers. Now, the students are the product, big business is the customer, and education is just part of the processing. Like the way you pluck and gut a chicken before you sell it as food. I gotta get out of this whole scene. It’s a shit-show.
AMinNC
Via BJ commenter RSR from another thread,
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/12/07/what-is-only-pisa-stat-that-matters/
a piece discussing student performance across countries, and what happens when you take poverty rates into account.
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that we don’t have an education problem in this country; we have a poverty problem.