Why Schools Should NOT Be Run Like Businesses

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school-closures

America loves business.

 

We worship the free market. Nothing is more infallible – not reason, not morals, not even God.

 

Money is the true measure of success – the more you have, the better a person you are.

 

This perverted ideology has taken over much of American life. Where we once cared about our country, justice and fair play, today it has all been reduced to dollars and cents.

 

Every problem can be answered by business. Every endeavor should be made more business-like. Every interaction should be modeled on the corporate contract, and every individual should try to maximize the outcome in his or her favor. Doing so is not just good for you, personally, but it’s what’s best for everyone involved. And this dogma is preached by the high priests of the market who claim that as they, themselves, get wealthier, one day we too will reap the same rewards – but that day never seems to come.

 

These principles are articles of faith so deeply ingrained that some folks can’t see past them. They have become the driving force behind our country and much of the world. Meanwhile, most people get ever poorer, our environment gets increasingly polluted and everything is up for sale.

 

One of the last holdouts against this market-driven nightmare is the public school system.

 

We still have widespread educational institutions run democratically at public expense dedicated to providing every child with the tools and opportunities to learn.

 

They’re not perfect. Far from it. But they enshrine one of the last vestiges of the America of our grandparents. Democracy and justice are the system’s core values – not profit, expansion and market share.

 

However, our schools suffer from disinvestment. Since we’ve segregated the rich from the poor into privileged and impoverished neighborhoods, it’s easy to provide more funding and resources to wealthy children and less to poor ones. That’s the main reason why some schools struggle – they haven’t the resources of the Cadillac institutions. Whenever we look at school spending, we look at an average allotment never bothering to consider that most of that money goes to children of the wealthy and much less to poor kids. Nor do we consider that more than half of our public school students live below the poverty line. Public schools strive to overcome the barriers of poverty, but the way we fund them ensures many of them are burdened by these same factors.

 

 

To make matters worse, our federal and state governments have allowed huge corporations to profit off our schools through an industry based on constant standardized testing and then selling schools the remediation materials to pass the tests. That’s all Common Core is – a more efficient way to market text books and test prep materials regardless of their inherent value (or lack thereof) to students. The same people criticizing public schools for being untouched by a business ethic often ignore how much they have already been brutalized by free market capitalism and the profit motive.

 

In any case, despite all these encumbrances, these problems are all surmountable. Doing so only requires us to go in the opposite direction away from the boardroom and the Wall Street subprime bubble. We need to work intrinsically for the good of each student. We need to see them as ends in themselves and not just incidentally for how much profit they can generate.

 

Unfortunately, such a solution is inconceivable to those in power. It goes against everything in which they believe. Too many Americans have been converted to the cult of the market so that the only solution they can support is to double down on what’s not working – to turn public schools even further into a business.

 

It’s absurd. Not everything benefits from being sold for a profit. Imagine if your spouse suggested running your marriage that way. It would turn you both into prostitutes selling yourselves at ever cheaper rates while any self respect, dignity and love disappeared.

 

Some things just are not for sale. Would you give up your deepest held convictions because doing so might help you turn a profit? Today I’m not a Christian, I believe in Baal because he’s got a bigger market share. Today I’m skeptical about gravity because the Acme Parachute Company is offering a bonus to jump out of the tenth floor naked.

 

Only fools let themselves be manipulated in this way. And that’s exactly what corporations and big business are trying to do with our public schools. Make no mistake. These are our institutions – they belong to us – yet privateers see a way to gobble up tax dollars while downgrading the services provided. They want to play us all for suckers even if it means leaving the next generation of poor and middle class children in the lurch. The only thing that matters to them is making bank.

 

They say we should run schools like a business? What kind of business exactly?

 

There are many different kinds of free enterprise. A coal company runs much differently from a restaurant, for example.

 

Public schools are nothing like any for-profit business. Sure, historically we’ve had a small percentage of private schools, but our country has never survived on an education system that is wholly private. By definition, the model does not work for everyone. That’s what the term “private” means – belonging to one person or group and not another. Our schools traditionally serve everyone. No single business in the country does that day-in-day-out. Perhaps we could find some new paradigm that would fit public schools, but let’s not pretend we can take some business model that already exists and apply it willy nilly. At the start, this mindset is naive at best.

 

Second, most businesses fail.

 

Most public schools succeed. They have a proven track record. Why are we going to jump to a model that builds its success on the failure of competitors?

 

Competition means there will be winners and losers. That’s fine in sports. It’s even fine in most goods and services. There’s not so much at stake. If I go to a bad restaurant, I have a bad meal. No big deal. I just go somewhere else tomorrow. If I get a bad education, there is no do over. I’m screwed.

 

That’s just not acceptable. Would you bet your life on opening a new restaurant? Would you bet your child’s education? Schools might not live up to your expectations, but the system isn’t set up from the outset so that some of them will eventually crash and burn.

 

Third, businesses get to choose their raw materials. If you’re making pizzas, you buy the best grains, cheese, tomatoes, etc. But public schools don’t get to choose their students. They have to teach even those who are more difficult to instruct. They accept kids with special needs, kids who’ve been abused, who live in poverty, who are undernourished, etc. And that’s how it needs to be.

 

If we were to follow the typical business model where the goal is merely profit, we would try to find ways to weed out these difficult students and make them someone else’s problem. In fact, that’s exactly what many privately-run charter schools and vouchers schools do. If they want our tax dollars, they shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate against our children. We should be seeking to stop such nefarious practices, not universalize them.

 

Finally, businesses are not essentially democratic. Corporations are beholden to their shareholders and businesses are beholden to their founders. Who, exactly, fits that role if we model our school after a business?

 

Public schools are run by democratically elected school boards. Privately run charter and voucher schools often are run by appointees. They aren’t beholden to the public who provide the tax dollars they need to operate. They are beholden to the limited group of people who would profit from them economically.

 

This is a terrible model for public schools. It gives very little back to the taxpayer. It gives less value to the student.

 

Should we run our schools like businesses? Not if we value students and taxpayers more than the handful of investors looking to profit off our dime.

72 thoughts on “Why Schools Should NOT Be Run Like Businesses”

  1. Exactly right, Steven.
    Children are not pizzas, or widgets, or whatever, who fit into a “business model.”
    They are human beings who deserve the best we can give them, they are our future, not “items” to make money for the corporatocracy, and schools are not institutions to make money for them or to train unthinking workers who will be satisfied with whatever their corprorate employers want.
    Whatever happened to the idea of the “common good”?
    I guess that’s old hat. 😦

    Liked by 1 person

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  2. What about running a high school like a university, say NYU or Colombia, both private universities where Dr. Ravitch has taught?

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    • But, teachingeconomist, high schools are not universities. Why would I want to run one like that? Look at the differences in enrollment policies between public high schools and universities as the most glaring difference. No one is suggesting you run a business like a school. Why would you run a school like a business? It doesn’t make any sense! Their goals are different.

      Liked by 2 people

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    • NYU, Columbia, et al, are not like public high schools. They have admission standards, and they do not have to accept all children who live in their “attendance areas.”
      Public high schools must do so, not to mention taking in disabled children with very specialized, legally mandated needs, children with behavior problems, children who they cannot bounce out if they get low grades in their classes.
      They are not the same things at all.

      Liked by 2 people

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      • Large number of public high schools also have admission requirements. Do you think it is perfectly appropriate for Stuyvesant High School, Staten Island Technical High School, Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, High School for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at the City College of New York, Brooklyn Technical High School, The Brooklyn Latin School, The Bronx High School of Science (these are the qualified admission high schools in a single public school district) to be run like a business because each of these high schools has a very high admission requirement while other high schools in the same school district, without academic admission standards, should not be run like a business?

        If you can not articulate why Stuyvesant High School should be run like a business and other NYC Public high schools should not be run like a business, you might want to consider the possibility that admission requirements are not, in fact, relevant to the discussion of schools being run as a business.

        If you don’t like the academic requirements for admission, we could go on to look at the public school programs which require auditions in the NYC Public School District. Perhaps the most artistically able students should go to a school that is run like a business, while the less artistically able should go to a school that is not.

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      • TeachingEconomist, now you’re talking about magnet schools. Yes, some of them do have admissions requirements, but they are not run like a business. They are part of a districts system of education not a part from it. They provide a certain group of students – perhaps those specializing in the arts – with an education best suited to them. They have positives and negatives, certainly, but they are not examples of schools run like businesses. That would require being run for a profit. Nice try. Moreover, if you have questions about specific NYC public schools, I suggest you take them up with the authorities. I cannot research individual schools in your state that you somehow think are being run for profit. I do have other things to do you know.

        Liked by 2 people

  4. I absolutely *hated* to click “like” on this article – because it was so heart-breakingly RIGHT ON. Truly, I cannot believe that *anyone* dissents (or why – other than the sake of argument out of some sort of tractor-beam confirmation bias).

    The Corporate Capitalist 1% has been and IS poison for most of us in this country, even to the extent of co-opting the meaning of words to their own end – not to mention overt lying repeated and tweeted. But then, their goals are not ours. They seem to want worker-bees that won’t talk back or think for themselves, WE want a broadly educated populace that will.

    I’m extremely worried about the fate of public education in the hands of McDonald’s choice for education Secretary — with her TRULY unbelievable and complete ignorance of how Public Schools operate – which she didn’t even attempt to get briefed upon before she opened her big mouth publicly, attacking the “Federally mandated” Common Core, swearing to “return” power to state-by-state control (say WHAT?! – nobody even vets their speeches?) Shades of Palin!

    Sorry to leave such a nasty spirited comment – it was as tame as I could manage, given ALL.
    xx,
    mgh
    (Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMore dot com)
    – ADD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder –
    “It takes a village to transform a world!”

    Liked by 2 people

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  6. Thanks for this excellent post — one quibble with your comparison. “Third, businesses get to choose their raw materials. If you’re making pizzas, you buy the best grains, cheese, tomatoes, etc.” Actually, this gets to another problem with business model — it’s not at all clear that most businesses choose the best raw materials. Many use cheap, crappy materials, and then spend a fortune convincing customers that they have the highest quality goods. We certainly a growing interest in “branding” in the education world and it needs to stop.

    Liked by 1 person

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  7. Hi Steven –

    I read this at commondreams but I’m not registered there, so I so wanted to come here and comment. I’m a retired college educator and your article is just so brilliant. Students are human beings, not commodities, and leaning is a process not something you can just buy or get by osmosis.

    I haven’t read that article about the founders yet that drext272 posted the link to, but I do know that they generally supported having an educated populace.

    Anyway, it was good to read what I and many others are thinking.

    Liked by 1 person

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