Our Public Schools: A Hostile Corporate-Style Takeover

 

After earning a BBA in marketing, it didn't take long for me to leave the field and use my knowledge of psychology to do something more meaningful to me than get consumers to want more stuff. I went back to college to become a certified teacher and started teaching public school in 1994. I have seen many changes over the years. In this post by retired teacher, blogger, and author, Nancy Bailey, the infiltration of business thinking is set out before us on a silver tray to be observed and hopefully, to be heeded. Perhaps you still think the infiltration and destruction of public schools can't happen in your community. However, you are likely wrong and are almost certainly late to the party. 

Every school district seems to be doing nearly identical things these days, from strategic plans to COVID-19 hybrid plans. Have you noticed the standardization of public school districts in your area? Many locally-elected school boards seem to be guided by misinformation and standardization (benchmarks, state tests, Pearson product assessments). If school boards willingly standardize and align their districts to be like others, do we still truly have local control?

 

Following are the buzzwords Bailey features in her post, based on an article from Phi Delta Kappan’s October issue, called School for Sale.

1. Accountability

2. Alignment

3. Benchmarks

4. Best Practice

5. Brand

6. CEO (Chief Executive Officer) 

7. Customers

8. Data-Driven

9. Disruption

10. Entrepreneurs

11. Next-Gen

12. Partnerships

13. Portfolio

14. Stakeholder

Read how each term is defined here.

From our cities to the suburbs to our rural public schools, we are well into the purposeful, hostile, corporate-style take over of our public schools. Are many families less satisfied with the experiences in their schools with these administrative, top heavy business models? Are families feeling duped by endless "surveys" that are meant to give the illusion of "stakeholder" voice? Are many families being left with children scarred from the trauma of not having their learning needs met? Does your district put more energy/money into lawyers, PR and their website than truly helping children? Does your school district refer to the children they serve or do they refer to the students they serve? How easily the word students replaces the reminder that we are serving (other people's) children, and takes it out of the school vernacular.  

It is the institutional memories of the seasoned professional and support staff who have dedicated their lives to the children in your community who are the memory keepers of the way things once worked better for kids. They are the ones who welcome the changes long overdue, as well. Ask the school staff what they think. They have likely been serving your community longer than any current administrator ever will. 

Time is running out for your school district, and everyone else's, too. And you should know, the push to privatize public schools is bipartisan.  If parents don't learn what is going on and speak out, it is very likely that your grand-kids will never experience genuine public education. They will have to end up in a public-private partnership school, AKA a charter school. As this happens, the jargon and over testing runs wild in place of the creativity, critical thinking, and creating that could have been.

Don't let the marketing fool you.