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Diane Ravitch, a top public education advocate, reports via AlterNet:
This month, the Public Broadcasting System is broadcasting a "documentary" that tells a one-sided story, the story that [Trump's Secretary of Education] Betsy DeVos herself would tell, based on the work of free-market advocate Andrew Coulson. Author of "Market Education", Coulson narrates "School, Inc.", a three-hour program, which airs this month nationwide in three weekly broadcasts on PBS.
Uninformed viewers who see this slickly produced program will learn about the glories of unregulated schooling, for-profit schools, teachers selling their lessons to students on the Internet. They will learn about the "success" of the free market in schooling in Chile, Sweden, and New Orleans. They will hear about the miraculous charter schools across America, and how public school officials selfishly refuse to encourage the transfer of public funds to private institutions. They will see a glowing portrait of South Korea, where students compete to get the highest possible scores on a college entry test that will define the rest of their lives and where families gladly pay for after-school tutoring programs and online lessons to boost test scores. They will hear that the free market is more innovative than public schools.
What they will not see or hear is the other side of the story. They will not hear scholars discuss the high levels of social segregation in Chile, nor will they learn that the students protesting the free-market schools in the streets are not all "Communists", as Coulson suggests. They will not hear from scholars who blame Sweden's choice system for the collapse of its international test scores. They will not see any reference to Finland, which far outperforms any other European nation on international tests yet has neither vouchers nor charter schools. They may not notice the absence of any students in wheelchairs or any other evidence of students with disabilities in the highly regarded KIPP charter schools. They will not learn that the acclaimed American Indian Model Charter Schools in Oakland does not enroll any American Indians, but has a student body that is 60 percent Asian American in a city where that group is 12.8 percent of the student population. Nor will they see any evidence of greater innovation in voucher schools or charter schools than in properly funded public schools.
[...] This program is paid propaganda. It does not search for the truth. It does not present opposing points of view. It is an advertisement for the demolition of public education and for an unregulated free market in education. PBS might have aired a program that debates these issues, but "School Inc." does not.
It is puzzling that PBS would accept millions of dollars for this lavish and one-sided production from a group of foundations with a singular devotion to the privatization of public services. The decision to air this series is even stranger when you stop to consider that these kinds of anti-government political foundations are likely to advocate for the elimination of public funding for PBS. After all, in a free market of television, where there are so many choices available, why should the federal government pay for a television channel?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @03:18PM (1 child)
"The Liberals" wanted change to better our schools not to defund them and run the education system into the ground so that the private sector fat cats can pilfer yet another aspect of our society to funnel cash into their pockets while jacking up the cost of education out of the reach of the poor. But nice try trying to flip the blame onto "duh libtards, herpaderp" as is the standard fare these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @04:28PM
Right.
You know, there's a lot of confusion about the term "Liberal" especially since americans mean something different by it from what the rest of the world means, so let's be more precise: progressives. People who are motivated to change society by the measure of progress, which is basically victorian/edwardian shorthand for science and technology. Not generally a bad idea - stopping cholera epidemics is a benefit of public health advances.
The progressives want to (and here I'm basing my commentary on their observed conduct, more than their rhetoric) have an educational system where everybody gets a basic education, and nobody has an exceptional education (apparently because that would be unfair) and where alternative educational systems are stamped out (because that would encourage educational deviance and withdrawal of resources from their ideal educational system) and where their values are instilled in the children (because that's how you get the next generation of voters).
That's an interesting take on "better our schools" and not one that is calculated to receive quite universal, uncritical acclaim.
How exactly fat cats are supposed to pilfer cash from people through the educational system any more than they already are (teachers' unions being among the fattest and cattiest around) isn't made clear. Perhaps it's because the problem isn't the fat cats or the pilfering, but which fat cats.
And as for "jacking up the cost of education out of the reach of the poor" I don't know if you've taken a good look around recently, but you get things like homeschooling collectives that cost little besides time in some of the most impoverished rural areas of the country. It's progressives who want to stamp those out. Because *mumblemumble* religious freaks *mumblemumble*.
The biggest panic I've seen from progressives is the same reason that police hate vigilantes: when a community is so despairing of the police that vigilantes are accepted, it undermines the credibility of the police. Homeschooling collectives are utterly despised by the educational establishment because they appear to undermine the entrenched educational establishment. What both the police and the bureaucrats miss is the fact that these are not attacks on their existence so much as symptoms of their failure.
I know, this probably bums you out, so let me leave you with this: "duh libtards, herpaderp"
There, feel better?