The Democratic-controlled Congress will discuss reauthorizing NCLB this year, even though it is destroying schools across the country. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) played a big role in California last year, as the state privatized 700 public schools. These either became for-profit schools or charter schools, which can pick who they let in.
The intention of NCLB was far from improving the quality of K--12 schools.
In 1996, Lehman Brothers -- a big investment house -- held one of the first conferences for the so-called (private) education industry. Their flier stated, "We've taken over the health care system; we've taken over the prison system; our next big target is the education system. We will privatize it and make a lot of money".
Lehman Brothers managing director, Mary Tanner, stated at the conference, "Education today, like health care 30 years ago, is a vast, highly localized industry ripe for change. The emergence of HMOs and hospital management companies created enormous opportunities for investors. We believe the same pattern will occur in education." (Barbara Miner. "For-Profits Target Education," Rethinking Schools, Spring, 2002, p 2)
So how do you create an education market?
"There are steps that would make K--12 schooling more attractive to for-profit investment, triggering a significant infusion of money to support research, development and creative problem-solving. For one, imposing clear standards for judging educational effectiveness would reassure investors that ventures will be less subject to political brickbats and better positioned to succeed if demonstrably effective. A more performance-based environment enables investors to assess risk in a more informed, rational manner." (Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, Possibilities, edited by Fredreck M Hess, p 252)
"In sum, NCLB represents an enormous challenge to the status quo in public education and has the potential to create a major opening for entrepreneurs inside and outside of the public system. Since NCLB passed, a large number of schools across the country have been identified as "in need of improvement" for failing to meet AYP targets". (Educational Entrepreneurship. p. 80)
They will get into the business of offering comprehensive support services. A large corporation with hundreds of schools won't have to worry if a given school succeeds or fails. The money is made in providing services for the aggregate. This is the same scheme proposed to take over Social Security and public worker pensions: atomize everything down to the smallest level, and then corporations aggregate them into large groups which can be used for investments.
Fighting Forward
One of the big problems historically for defenders of public schools is that the battles take a different form in every locality. It's really difficult to unite even state-wide when there is no common thread. You wind up being against everything, rather than for something.
Now, for perhaps the first time since Brown Vs Board of Education outlawed segregation in 1955, we can unify nationally. It's time to end NCLB. It's clearly the attack dog of the privatizers. Opposition to NCLB has never been higher. The Educator Roundtable has an on-line, anti-NCLB petition (with now more than 28,000 signatures). See www.educatorroundtable.org/petition.html. Everyone should sign!
NCLB was just the beginning. Now, Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, has helped fund a report from the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce that calls for completely transforming public education. Gates is one of the new-style philanthropreneurs. His education foundation disperses more than $1 billion a year to programs he supports. The US Department of Education has only about $20 million that it is free to allocate. Many people thus call Gates the country's real public school superintendent!
The commission calls for replacing public K--12 schools with "contract schools." Contract schools are charter schools on steroids. NCLB requires high school students to pass 8th grade level tests by the time they graduate. Contract schools will require students to pass 12th grade standards by the 10th grade or be kicked out of school.
Of course, such students will be able to use their proposed government-financed (a mere $500 a year!) "Personal Competitiveness Accounts" to buy whatever education they need! Riiiiiight!
One thing is certain. The very richest Americans, all based in hugely powerful and influential corporations, are proposing that the United States, the first country to develop free, universal public education, now abandon it.
Isn't this worthy of some public discussion and debate? Call it what you want, when corporations meet privately to determine what to do with a public institution, one that mainly serves the people who must work for said corporations, this smells a lot like class warfare.
Since the corporate attack is openly against the public nature of education, there is no way to protect our hard-won gains towards equal and public education without defending and expanding the very nature of what "the public" means.
Public education is perhaps the last bastion in society where the public has a voice. It's not quite like that for elections anymore, given that electronic voting machines can't be examined to see if they fix elections. Their programs are, after all, private property!
Ending public schools is massive social engineering. If corporations can discuss transforming society, then so can we! If corporations can openly call for re-engineering society, then it is appropriate to discuss what kind of changes shall be made, whose interests they will be made in and who shall benefit.
Let's open up the discussion of what kind of society the majority of people need and put it on the table. Let's make it as open and as public as possible. Let's expand the control of the public in every direction! Let's make the future public property!
