Some housekeeping items and announcements.
First, listen to our informal charter school special broadcast yesterday, which you can stream or download here.
Second, we’ll be recording new “real radio” episodes of At the Chalk Face for WTDY this coming weekend in Madison, WI. In addition to the intelligent and informed banter from your hosts, we’ll be interviewing a fantastic slate of guests: Jonathan Kozol, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Kevin Kumashiro, and the inimitable Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Third, at some point this weekend, not sure what time, we’ll be recording a call-in segment. It won’t be “live,” but we’ll be accepting calls at a certain time which we’ll announce when we have more information. I had no idea this is what the Car Talk guys did with their show, I always thought they were taking live calls. Apparently not.
Well, sure, public schools, private schools, have been buying “tools” and other products for years. I find the current regime of private enterprise available as suppliers of goods to schools a normal position in capitalism. My concern is one of dominance, as alluded to in this article (Bill and Melinda Gates, foundations, etc) of the means to control the choice of vendors. All provisioning of public schools should be at no cost to the schools. Just as single payer health insurance should be available to anyone–globally. If the US Department of War and Imperialism was to be rigorously restructured, there would be no need for profit motives in education. Social programs, public schools, would be flush with cash and market free. If one considers markets in our current form of deregulated capitalism (elitist socialism) as free, then they are delusional. When this current oligarchy is replaced with the next (current insurrectionists becoming the new institutionalists (thank you, Chris Hayes) let’s hope the new regime is highly regulated. Sixty-five percent of GDP for “defense?” Or for huge profit taking by those venture capitalists, those wonderful entrepreneurs who control the means of production? How corrupt is that? Give the people a choice in the spending of their taxes. Hey, free public schools with unlimited funding. Free college access for all. Shakespeare for everyone!!!
Tim,
Can you talk about the parallels between misguided health care and education policies? I’ve outlines three–please tell me what you think:
There is an important parallel in the misguided voucher, privatization, and competition themes of the Romney campaign with regard to health care, and their approach to education.
1. Vouchers don’t work any better in education than they do in health care. We need a universally good, fair and accessible to all public education system—just like we do in healthcare. School vouchers, like healthcare vouchers, are nothing but a broken promise. The well-funded schools will not take in students from poorly funded schools, any more than private health care companies will embrace people in poor health with pre-existing conditions.
2. Privatization in education—e.g. more charter schools, cyber schools and private corporations or states taking over schools—at the expense of providing equal and excellent education for all children in our democracy, does not work any better than vouchers.
3. The free market, corporate, profit focused takeover of education—with competition, privatization and a focus on testing and numbers at the expense of the growth and learning of our most precious resource—doesn’t work either.
We have tried more testing, more competition and more “choice” for three decades, and our student learning has suffered greatly. Let’s look to Finland’s example: Universal healthcare, well-resourced public schools, universal early childhood education (rather than our private, deeply segregated system for those with money), and support for teachers as a respected, well paid profession.
Best,
Jill Bartoli