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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 Thursday June 22 2017, @04:27AM
I don't think anybody here is arguing for corruption. If you know of corruption, please alert the appropriate authorities, and campaign against the corrupt. Thank you.
I don't think that anybody here is arguing for christian religious practices in schools. If you know of such practices, please alert the appropriate social pressure groups and bring them the evidence so that they can fight it in court. Thank you.
If there are people who are saddened by these developments, you should be able to make them your political allies if they cannot move elsewhere. Use this alliance to improve education, and we shall all ultimately benefit. Thank you.
The problem you have with federal educational standards is rather more complex, because of certain assumptions that have not been proven to be correct by lived experience. Federal educational standards have not actually developed a great track record of being effective (rather the reverse, in some notorious recent cases), and analysis of expert opinion for the purposes of creating a curriculum (something with which I have plenty of experience in the real world) is a lot more fraught than you seem to think. On top of that, who do you think controls the federal level of this sort of thing, other than politicians and bureaucrats? Not only that, but they are the worst kind because they are very, very far removed from the people affected by their decisions. Arguing for federal control of education is like arguing for federal control of parking fines; a distant, largely unaccountable elite make choices that directly affect local concerns. Again, the more it happens the more you find pressure groups fighting back against it, with every tool in their arsenal including parochial schools, charter schools, private schools, homeschooling and in the case of immigrants, sending their kids overseas to get a better education in boarding schools.
When people in their hundreds of thousands are doing their damndest to undo what the feds dictate, at great personal expense and sacrifice, you're looking at a failed public policy and you need to stop it and figure out something more likely to work.
I know one homeschooler with a religious background. The guy's jewish, and he lives in a community without a jewish school or anything similar. That's it.
I do however know a bunch of homeschoolers who are professors, professionals and otherwise surprisingly left-leaning suburbanites. Many of them are in the tech industry. They're teaching their kids as fast and hard as they can. Their collective's math expert is an actual professor of mathematics, for example. So your cliche needs some updating.
And, just to add some spice to that particular sauce, homeschooling has won in the courts. Repeatedly. It's here to stay, and the worse the federal influence, the more it's likely to develop.
But hey, best of luck turning that clock back.