Financing Reform

Privatization

• What is Privatization?
• Confronting the Challenge of Privatization in Public Education
• The Significance of Privatization and Choice for Education
• School Privatization and choice a Sociopolitical Analysis
• Is Privatization through Education Vouchers Really the Answer? A Comment on West
• Privatization In Education
• Charter School Expedite Privatization of Education
• Tools to Fight Privatization
• Ten Warning Signs of Privatization
• Privatization and Educational Support Personnel
• Evaluation of Privatization and Charter Schools
• Privatization of Public Education
• Hard Lessons: Public and Privatization
• Perspectives on Private Management of Public Schools
• Is School Privatization the Answer?

 

What is Privatization?

Concerned about the threat of privatization in your school district or government agency? School boards, local and state governments are increasingly turning to privatization or contracting out as a simple solution to complex problems. What's it all about? Is privatization the magic bullet politicians and administrators think it is? What forms does privatization take? And how do we counter their claims?

Privatization is "the act of reducing the role of government or increasing the role of the private sector in an activity or the ownership of assets."

Confronting the Challenge of Privatization in Public Education

Public education in the United States may be on the verge of radical reform. The impetus for sweeping change is provided by the persistence of severe problems of a systemic nature which show no hint of fading away. Too many public schools have been ravaged by ongoing financial troubles which undermine the provision of educational services. Unstable labor relations, decaying buildings and facilities that no longer meet educational needs, and an array of social problems that overwhelm school personnel, are just some of major issues confronting public schools. There is also growing public concern over the quality of education based on the widespread perception that standards have fallen and that too many public schools are failing to meet the intellectual needs of students. In many communities, public schools have become a last resort for those who can not afford the option of private schools, while those with means do whatever possible to avoid them.

 

The Significance of Privatization and Choice for Education

Most other publications on educational reform (hereinafter referred to as "conventional approaches") either accept the existing governance structure of public education or would increase producer control of it; the latter category includes proposals to "increase teacher autonomy," or "empower teachers," or otherwise weaken teacher accountability to parents or school board. In my opinion, educational reform cannot be achieved through these conventional approaches.

Such approaches emphasize the need for better school boards, more qualified teachers, higher teacher salaries, strong anti-drug measures, more homework requirements, the elimination of superficial courses, and strengthening student discipline, to mention just a few staples in the reform reports. For the most part, the actions required would be taken at the local level. The argument to be made here, however, is that any of the local actions required cannot be widely successful under our present system of education.

 

School Privatization & Choice A Sociopolitical Analysis

Choice remains a controversial solution to urban educational problems. In this paper, I will discuss some of the consequences of school choice when applied to urban education. My intention is to focus on the way ideology has run roughshod over well-reasoned debate, how the seemingly neutral term "choice" is used as a cover for the actuation of corporate objectives, and the role of voucher plans in perpetuating narrow class and race interests.

School choice plans--which vary from one location to another and one proponent to another--are diverse in the extreme. The full impact of school choice on urban education is beyond the scope of this paper. Particular reference will be made to the public school privatization scheme underway in Baltimore and the controlled-choice, voucher program in Milwaukee. These examples were chosen for their particular relevance to the race, class, and corporate issues that I wished to examine. Although not really a true choice plan, the Baltimore scheme will be used to illustrate some of the claims made in favor of deregulated, private school choice. The Milwaukee program was chosen because of its implications for choice and affirmative action. In addition, as a Milwaukee native I have a particular interest in that city's program and have followed it more closely than the others.

 

Is Privatization through Education Vouchers Really the Answer? A Comment on West 

Government-financed school vouchers promise to improve consumer choice while still providing the public funding needed for families to invest adequately in their children's education. But politically and in practice, the choice that vouchers offer can mean many things, from eliminating neighborhood residency as a condition for attending a public school to allowing groups of parents and teachers to form their own public schools (charter schools in the United States, for example).

Privatization In Education

By adopting marketing methods from business, public schools are competing for the attention of parents and students their customers. Before charter schools and cross-district choice, this phenomenon was unheard of.

 

Charter Schools Expedite Privatization of Education

Charter schools have been promoted, both in Canada and abroad, as a painless way to maintain the best of public education, while expanding local involvement and accountability. However, in light of the recent debate about the supposed need to reduce the role of government in public life (championed by the right-wing Fraser Institute) and the "necessary" budget cuts to our public education system (under the guise of improvement and efficiency), charter schools need to be examined much more rigorously.

 

Tools to Fight Privatization

• Student Achievement Has Generally Declined Under Vouchers Or Private Management Of Public Schools

• Privatization Does Not Necessarily Save Money

• Private Contractors Are Less Accountable To The Public and Elected Officials

• There Is An Alternative: High Standards With Real Stakes For Students

 

 

The Ten Warning Signs of Privatization

Watch out for these signs that privatization or contracting out is a threat in your school district or work place

 

Privatization and Educational Support Personnel

Privatization refers to the variety of arrangements used by governments at the local, state and national levels to shift production or delivery of goods and services provided by public employees to private businesses. When a school system enters into an agreement with a private company to provide a service, whether it's washing windows on a one-time basis, staffing and running cafeterias, providing speech therapy or pupil transportation, it is privatizing the work of public employees. A number of new ideas and pilot projects are being tested in various school districts across the country to prevent privatization.

 

Evaluation of Privatization and Charter Schools

The relationship between privatization and charter school reform is complicated and multifaceted, as different charter schools, operating in different local contexts, adopt different privatization strategies. Thus, in the first section of this paper, we briefly describe the multiple meanings of the term privatization and provide an overview charter school reform. In the second section we discuss the various ways in which charter school operators are privatizing their schools, including an increased reliance on private resources; private management of charter schools; contracting out with private firms for services; and restricting who applies, who gets in, and who has voice within the school community.

 

Privatization of Public Education

Turning the operation of public schools over to private companies is a controversial idea based on the less-controversial notion that part of what makes improving public schools so hard is that they are bogged down in bureaucratic mire.

Advocates of privatization ventures see in them the combined virtues of government and business. They argue that government's oversight function and its responsiveness to the needs of citizens can be retained while taking advantage of private enterprise's ability to be more efficient, reduce costs, and maximize production—in this case, student achievement.

 

Hard Lessons: Public Schools and Privatization

Privatizing public schools has neither raised student achievement nor lowered educational costs, according to a just-released study by three scholars at NYU's Institute for Education and Social Policy, sponsored by the Twentieth Century Fund. These claims for increased outcomes and lowered costs have been central to the arguments of privatization advocates. Carol Ascher, Norm Fruchter and Robert Berne examined major current privatization initiatives, including both contracting out and vouchers, in Baltimore, Hartford, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Chelsea, Massachusetts, as well as privatization experiments across the country sponsored by the federal government in the 1970s.

 

Perspectives on Private Management of Public Schools

Few issues in education today seem at once so appealing and so frightening as the notion of a local school district hiring a private company to come in and run its schools.  

Is School Privatization the Answer?

For conservatives and even some liberals, privatizing public schools has become the solution to the nation's "education crisis." Given American values about competition and choice, this sounds like a great idea, especially since the discussion is unclouded by empirical data on educational systems where there is choice and privatization. Yet such systems do exist, and--contrary to present claims--their experience suggests that voucher plans promise a lot but may actually make most children in schools worse off.

According to conservatives, the main problem with public schools is that they are public--they are managed by government bureaucracies and staffed by unionized, tenured, and largely unaccountable teachers. If only we could hire private management companies to run public school districts or, even better, get a "voucher" or "school choice" plan going that included public and private schools, they claim, students would learn more and schools would cost less, or at least cost no more than they do now.