Comments on: Government as venture capitalist?

By: oakie

oakie — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:07:46 +0000

I think Sharon’s hobgoblin is private enterprise.

I think Dung Xiao Ping said it best: black cat, white cat, whatever catches mice is the best.

By: Ms. McLaughlin

Ms. McLaughlin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:16:06 +0000

Ms. Murphy’s probably read this. It’s rather long, but important, and there’s quite a little section on the small school experiment in Oakland.

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“The Corporate Surge Against Public Schools,” by Steven Miller and Jack Gerson (2008).

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2304695/The-Corporate-Surge-Against-Public-Schools
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What they said.

By: JR

JR — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:07:22 +0000

We are spending more than 5-10 countries that are out educating our kids in the US, and we should be ashamed.

By: JR

JR — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:03:36 +0000

I should have said near the top(top 5 infact) which is pathetic when our results are not even in the top 20.

http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/economic/educationlibraryspending.htm

This is older data

Here are newer grim stats!

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_spe_per_pri_sch_stu-spending-per-primary-school-student.

We should be near the top in results, but we aren’t even close.

There is more, but I am getting sick just looking at it.

By: Cranky Teacher

Cranky Teacher — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:23:33 +0000

JR, I would like to see your evidence on per capita spending. Do you have a link or some numbers?

It is an interesting claim but I would like to see some evidence.

By: JR

JR — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:50:49 +0000

Ignoring evidence?
The education system has been below average for three decades, and reformers of sorts have only been engaged in this struggle for a decade and a half. Where was the concern of the education establishment in all that time. Except for a core of wonderful dedicated teachers the education system has concerned itself with politics,pay,perks and pensions not pupils. The education system just needed more money for the kids, while ignoring the fact that the U.S. spends more per capita on the education of it’s children than any other country on earth by far. We just needed district reading and math specialist’s(KA…CHING!!!!more money)intervention specialists(KA…CHING!!!!!more money)Paraprofessionals(KA…CHING!!!!!) and now we have this money hungry bloated education system that is just worried about how to sustain its dominance at the public tax money trough so it can continue to gorge itself. You wanna talk about having little to do with improving outcomes for kids, the unions ought to use this for their motto “Forget about measuring progress and measuring relative achievement and teacher quality, just trust us and give us more money, and we’ll fix it, trust us! Yeah, we have trusted you thirty or forty years too long. Where is the real greed here, and what about their ultimate goal, to do as little as possible for as much pay as is possible.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:37:24 +0000

PS: The above is exactly why today’s education reformers are ignoring research and evidence. The proven strategies, such as those discovered by Finland, are irrelevant to their ultimate goal.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:32:21 +0000

Finland reinvented its educational system a generation ago, and in doing so has produced the top system in the world. Student results demonstrate its superiority.

The underpinning of the grand ed reform experiment in the U.S. (creative destruction, investing in a disruptive force, venture philanthropy) is light years away from the now-time-tested and proven strategy being used in Finland. Here’s Pasi Sahlberg’s (Finland’s education minister) comparison of the two:

Global educational reform movement [ours]
-Teaching core subjects
-Standardization
-Test-based accountability
-Race to the top
-Renting reform ideas: Adopting educational reform ideas from corporate world and scientific management. Hiring private sector experts as leaders.

Education policies in Finland
-Broad and creative learning
-Customizing
-Professional responsibilities
-Slow learning
-Owning a dream: Building a shared inspirational vision of what good education system school and teaching look like. Appointing education professionals to leadership positions.

By the way, Stephen Dubner is a journalist/author who co-wrote Freakonomics with Steve Levitt. Levitt teaches economics at the University of Chicago, as did Milton Friedman. Friedman is credited with developing the Chicago school of economics, a school of thought which promotes “free market” libertarianism, sometimes known as neoliberalism.

This economic practice is what is responsible for the transfer of a huge proportion of our prisons and military into private hands over the past two decades. Make no mistake, years ago, the proponents of this mentality set their sites on dismantling the public schools because they strongly believe in privatization. After the failed attempt of vouchers, the shift focused on charters as a way to make privatization happen. Friedman felt public schools should be entirely eliminated. Reagan and Schwarzennegger have been huge Milton Friedman fans.

Read Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” to learn the full story about how neoliberalism has played out across the world; to me it’s horrifying. In the book we learn that the prescriptive shift to induce privatization ALWAYS happens just after a crisis, either real (natural disaster) or manufactured (propaganda). That’s what the “educational crisis” is all about; a great deal of propaganda has whipped everyone up. There is an established formula for how to proceed.

Underneath what’s being done to public schools today has everything to do with the privatization of public educational institutions in order to further the absolute dominance of corporate power. It has little to do with improving the outcome for poor kids.

Here’s more about Finland’s authentic approach to improving education: http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/10/finlands-approach-to-education.html