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Harm

Privatization of schools harms public education in several key ways: 1. It reduces economies of scale by shrinking funding pools for public schools when students transfer to private schools, threatening music, art, language, and other programs. 2. It undermines social integration in communities by weakening important institutions like schools that bring neighborhoods together. 3. The "churn" of competition advocated by proponents actually harms students, especially poor students, by creating instability that is bad for children's education. 4. Advocates of privatization ultimately aim to create a tiered education system that relegates students rejected by private schools to underfunded public schools. This threatens the social contract of society providing education for

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190 views

Harm

Privatization of schools harms public education in several key ways: 1. It reduces economies of scale by shrinking funding pools for public schools when students transfer to private schools, threatening music, art, language, and other programs. 2. It undermines social integration in communities by weakening important institutions like schools that bring neighborhoods together. 3. The "churn" of competition advocated by proponents actually harms students, especially poor students, by creating instability that is bad for children's education. 4. Advocates of privatization ultimately aim to create a tiered education system that relegates students rejected by private schools to underfunded public schools. This threatens the social contract of society providing education for

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The Harms of School Privatization

by William Smeltzer (Draft)

One of the impediments to reclaiming the conversation, or rather expanding it to those


citizens who have just not paid that much attention, is that it is not evident to many
people how privatization harms public schools, communities, and children.
While advocates for public schools have strong arguments, we have largely left them
implicit. The harm seems obvious to us, and while we cloister with others of like mind
or do battle with passionate advocates on the other side, we have had little to say to those
who are not involved in the fray.
The non-combatants understand that the funding comes from the same sources and is
necessarily reduced when a student moves to a privatized school. But then the expense
of educating that student is also removed. They may even understand that most of the
recipients of public moneys have never been in the public schools and are an added
burden to the public purse, but the numbers seem small, and those kids could go to
public schools if they chose.
So what's the problem?
1. Economies of scale:
Educational opportunities available to your child are largely dependent on a pool of
resources provided on a per student basis. When a child transfers to a privatized school
that pool shrinks. Many overhead expenditures don't evaporate just because the students
do. Trying to maintain programs in the face of declining enrollment is difficult even
when the decline is merely caused by the aging of the community or the closure of a
large employer.
Music, Art, and Physical Education programs are extremely vulnerable, and so are
academic classes like foreign languages and advanced Math, and services like libraries.
If a public high school has to cut German because of competition from a privatized
school, instruction in that language is likely to simply be unavailable anywhere in the
community.
2. Social Integration:
Neighborhood Schools in small communities provide what anthropologists call social
integration. Like the 4H and the volunteer fire department, schools are the focus of
activities that bring communities together. Republicans, Democrats, fans of the Packers

or the Vikings, all the differences that tend toward bickering and alienation are mediated
by the residents relationship to the local school.
Perhaps surprisingly, institutions of social integration are even more consequential in
urban areas. In 1995 a heat wave killed many people in some African-American
neighborhoods in Chicago. Many saw this as merely another example of social
dysfunction. But other, very similar, African-American areas had death rates resembling
the city as a whole. Researchers concluded that the spared communities had institutions;
schools, churches, social clubs, lacking in the hardest hit neighborhoods. The passion of
Chicago parents about the closing of their neighborhood schools is not only about
convenience or class size; it is about survival.
3. The Churn
In the minds of market-based school reformers, "competition" is the force powering
school improvement, but the mechanism is the "churn". In the "churn" things improve
because failing schools close when faced with the exodus of students to superior schools.
Those schools then close when something better comes along. The least effective
teachers are fired and replaced with other teachers, some of whom are fired in turn as
they become the least effective. This is the model of "Utopian Economics, where the
market solves all problems. It goes far beyond the insights of Adam Smith.
There can be many criticisms of this idea. To work the model requires that consumers
have a perfect knowledge of which school or teacher is really best. We tend to be more
informed by marketing and advertising than by facts - even if we have access to them.
Then there's the tendency of the invisible hand of the market to punch hard the weakest
and most vulnerable. The most important aspect of the churn is that the instability that it
causes is terrible for children - especially poor children.
5. A Vast Right-wing Conspiracy:
The language of conspiracy theorists is off-putting, as it should be. Life is full of
coincidences. Any concerted activity is easily characterized as conspiratorial, especially
if it has an element of secrecy. But it is clear that current voucher and charter proposals
are not the final goal of privatizers. Like a pawn moving stealthily down the board to
become a queen, proponents have out-played supporters of public schools for twenty
years and are getting close to their end game.
Looking at the history of the Milwaukee voucher program, one can see the pattern of
ever-expanding enrollment caps, less restrictive income requirements, and the expansion
of geographical extent. The next steps include elimination of any income requirements
and allowing state subsidies to be used as partial payment of tuition. This is an element

of the final ALEC model bill.


At that point participation in the program becomes profitable for for-profit school
management companies, and voucher and schools could start popping up like
McDonald's in fairly small communities. This will create a two or three tiered publicly
financed education system. In the upper tier will be kids whose families can afford
private school tuition beyond what the state pays. The middle tier will have the students
who cant afford additional tuition, but whose attitudes and abilities will gain them
admission and retention in a privatized school. The lowest tier, the public schools, will
be occupied by those students rejected by the schools in the other two tiers. This is not a
new system. It is the dominant paradigm in those countries usually denigrated as the
third world.
5. The Social Contract:
The Social Contract is an idea that describes the network of obligations that allows a
society to function. Functionally, it predates the eighteenth century Enlightenment that
gave us the term. It has an important generational component. Adults nurture and
educate the young and support the elderly. The young repeat the process when they grow
to adulthood. It is just an idea, ephemeral, but fundamental, and so vulnerable to the cult
of greed that permeates our culture today.
I don't have children in school - never have. I pay school supporting taxes and always
have. I don't feel that I deserve a rebate because I don't use this particular government
service. Public schooling does not exist to satisfy the needs of any particular parent. It
is a public good. My responsibilities to support the police are not obviated by living in a
gated community, because I benefit from a secure society. Likewise, the parents of
private school students benefit from living among a generally educated population.

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