DECEPTIVE OPPOSITION TO EDUCATIONAL OUTSOURCING

As the private sector offers services in more segments of the $500 billion K-12 education sector, special interest groups are working to discredit not only private-sector involvement in public education, but also the private sector as a whole. Two recent examples illustrate how teacher unions and other education advocacy groups often present their members with a negatively biased view of the private sector and its involvement in education. This approach leaves educators unexposed to the larger body of evidence that shows competition and privatization have improved service in almost every business sector, including education.

In the September 2004 issue of NEA Today, the monthly organ of the National Education Association, a series of articles collected under the title "Cash Cow" highlights privatization failures and gives union members advice on how to fight privatization initiatives. The report fails to mention the hundreds of case studies showing benefits to children and the public from school privatization. The NEA Today series argues that when "private profits outweigh public accountability, educators and kids pay the price." As evidence for the failure of privatization initiatives, the articles offer stock horror stories of privatization missteps and selected studies showing privatization is more expensive than traditional public-sector operation.

The series fails to mention the large body of research that shows substantial cost savings and improvements in service quality from privatization of school support services. According to the most recent school privatization survey conducted by American School & University magazine, 32 percent of the nation's school districts outsource transportation and about 17 percent outsource food service. Extensive literature reviews of cost savings have found between 20 and 40 percent savings from school outsourcing. For example, in 2002, the Philadelphia school district faced a $28 million deficit. By turning to privatized transportation, custodial, food service, and other support services, the district saved $29 million over two years and erased its deficit--while running a robust teacher recruitment program and without firing any teachers......

The NEA position on outsourcing was echoed in a September 2004 report on commercialism in education from Arizona State University's Alex Molnar, who negatively portrays private-sector involvement in education as exploiting children. Even sponsorships, such as corporate support of the National Merit Scholarship Program, are dismissed as programs that "often serve the donors' commercial purposes." The report, Virtually Everywhere: Marketing to Children in America's Schools, measures what Molnar views as the evils of commercialism in schools by counting the number of media references to private-sector involvement in education. Those references include not only privatization but also corporate sponsorships, exclusive licensing agreements, sponsored educational materials, and fundraising. Molnar reports that media references in five out of eight categories of schoolhouse commercialism increased between July 1, 2003 and June 30, 2004. Overall, he finds media references to commercialism increased 9 percent as compared to the 2002-2003 school year.

Molnar and his Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State are affiliated with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups, and concerned parents. CCFC's mission is "countering the harmful effects of marketing to children through action, advocacy, education, research, and collaboration among organizations and individuals who care about children. CCFC supports the rights of children to grow up--and the rights of parents to raise them--without being undermined by rampant consumerism.".....

Molnar's report offers no evidence of corporations limiting curriculum or blocking participation in the democratic process. His report and the recent NEA Today demonstrate the need for a more balanced presentation of private-sector involvement in education for the benefit of administrators, teachers, and parents.

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ALMOST ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Several days ago, I ran across an article about a 52-year-old man who had lived with his 12-year-old daughter in a tent in a Portland , Oregon park for four years. When they were discovered, the girl was described as "well-spoken beyond her years." Actually, this girl, who would have been in the seventh grade, tested at the 12th grade level. And what did her educational materials consist of? A set of old encyclopedias and a Bible. A few days ago, in one of those odd synchronicities that happen to all of us, I ran across another article about a father encountering three high-school girls who were talking about a party they had attended. He writes:

"Seemingly still semi-drunk from the party, the 16- and 17-year-old girls began to recount how much coke, weed, vodka, guys and girls they did the night before. Listening to the F-bomb riddled report of the previous night's peccadilloes left me thinking, how sad . . . and . . . what a waste . . . ."

He recounts how he and his wife pulled their daughters out of the public schools: "It's been eleven months since we pulled our teenage daughters out of the public school system and started to home school them, and I could kick myself for waiting so long. The educational, emotional, spiritual and physical progress they have made has been amazing."

I'm certainly not defending an obviously extremely eccentric father raising his daughter in a tent from the ages of eight to 12. But I am sympathetic to his reasons. It's entirely possible his daughter might have turned into one of those bragging 16- and 17-year-olds. I find it bizarre that I am sympathetic at all to a man raising his daughter in a tent in a park. But I am. It's because of what the public schools have finally, after all these years, created: kids whom I wouldn't want for my own.

When I ask myself if I would like to be raised like that, of course I say, "No." But then a little voice says, "Remember seventh grade?" When it comes right down to it, in some ways the tent in the park would have been better. When a girl raised in a tent in a park, with only a Bible and an obsolete set of encyclopedias, turns out so much better than kids from the public schools that a comparison isn't even close, it shows the public school are now beyond repair.

I'll bet this 12-year-old isn't damaged at all. In ten years, I'll bet she'll be just fine. She certainly will have some interesting stories to tell. As for the three girls soused on the coke and booze and weed? Well, who knows? Only time will tell. But I've met these people, lots of them, and so have you. Not all of them make it out okay.

I'm sure those who support the public schools are having a conniption fit over this fundamentalist Christian father raising his daughter in a tent. Oh, the horror or it all! Yet, when it comes to those three girls and others like them, all we hear are excuses. And, of course, the eternal whining that more money is needed.

The public schools have been going bad for a long time. They were going bad when I was in them. Even with all the partying we did, we would have thought those three drunken and stoned girls were nuts, the kind almost all of us would have stayed away from. They were the exception then. Now it looks as if they are becoming the norm.

Some people claim we need the schools to "socialize" kids. Schools don't socialize kids; they traumatize them. I am reminded of the popularity of Stephen King's first novel, Carrie, which was about the shark pit that high school can be. And King, who obviously based the novel on his time in school, went to high school in the '60s. Now it's 40 years later, and worse, not better.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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