McCain Selling Discredited "Magic" of the Market as School Solution
In this election, McCain has championed school choice while Obama has promised to expand the education budget. Mike Rose, author and professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education, agreed to speak with me about the major differences in the candidates' plans. Rose is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the author of ten books, including Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education and The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker. Mike hosts a bi-weekly conversation about educational issues on his blog.
McCain asserts that educational mobility is tied to economic mobility, arguing that "Too many of our children are trapped by geography and by economies in our failing schools."
Mike Rose: Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right; educational mobility and economic mobility are intertwined in the United States. But it's not as simple a relationship as some would like to think. There are other barriers to mobility in addition to lack of education.
The limitation of the McCain-Palin platform is that there is no recognition that this entrapment is the result of not only of a poor school, but of other factors like poor health care, unemployment or underemployment, failing industry, residential discrimination, poor housing, and transportation, etc. These additional factors present profound challenges to how well kids can thrive in school or move up the economic ladder.
It's predictable that someone with John McCain's voting record and political ideology would put so much store in the notion of choice. This creates the conditions for the primary mover of improvement of public schools to be the market. That's an extraordinary position to take when the vulnerabilities and the blind opportunism of the market have never been clearer.
Choice is a really seductive concept for Americans. Americans love the idea of choice; it's central to our notion of individual freedom. But public school choice is an illusory choice, particularly for people who have limited resources. Let's say you did have the option of going where you wanted to go. How are you going to get there? Are there going to be enough good schools within your area even if you had the means? Are you going to make private schools relax their restrictions? If you do have this terrific school and everybody flocks to it, are you going to provide extra resources to that school?
If you have a choice plan of the kind that McCain is proposing, you're going to have to intervene in the market in all kinds of ways. You're going to have to provide additional monies to particular schools, means of transportation, various subsidies for schools with special needs populations. You're going to have to talk private schools into relaxing admissions restrictions. You're going to have to put into place a lot of regulation, because one of the problems we've seen with charter schools is that some were unregulated so the quality was terrible or they were sham operations with no quality control. What we know about John McCain's voting record is that he's not a believer in regulation. Yet, if you have the kind of public school choice that he's suggesting, and you do it without some kind of significant intervention in the market, well, we can imagine what's going to happen. We've seen it happen in the last three weeks.
McCain's plan says, "we should let [schools] compete for the most effective, character-building teachers, hire them, and reward them." But many educators say competition is toxic to the classroom setting. Could you comment on this idea of competition in the classroom and the effect it has on learners?
Just imagine that environment! If you just think it through for a minute, that model would essentially turn school districts into Hewlitt Packard versus IBM versus Apple. How would that work, if you're really trying to bring this sort of business competitive model to bear on the teaching force? Would you have then a salary scale that could go flying off the charts in the way that it can in industry? Fiscal hawks would certainly not advocate that kind of a payroll scale. Worse, imagine what would happen to school districts and regions, where teachers may be at one school for a year or a half a year and then be drawn away.
Do you mean we could suddenly have headhunters and that sort of thing?
Yes, precisely. We would very quickly have the emergence of a professional class of headhunters for elementary and secondary schools. Imagine that. How could even market enthusiasts think that this would be a healthy thing? Again, it shows the flaw in thinking that the free market is the appropriate model for all realms of human interaction and experience and development.
Public education is a powerful Jeffersonian notion: the idea that the public makes a commitment to the education of its citizens and the care of its children. It doesn't mean there can't be ways of creatively bringing public and private together. But it has to happen in the right kind of policy environment with the right kind of fundamental driving principles.
When you look at the people involved in Obama's education think tank -- like Stanford's Linda Darling-Hammond -- you can see that he's got folks who have thought long and hard on this business of teaching as a profession. There's an understanding that in addition to monetary incentives, there's also a number of other things to do to improve the lives of teachers. There's the possibility for mentoring relationships, for collaboration, and the possibility of being involved in school reform and curriculum development. There are incentives in both candidates' platforms, but the Obama plan shows a much richer, multi-dimensional understanding of what a teaching career is like and what it is that motivates people to do it and stay in it.
Last question. When you were researching Possible Lives, you sat down with parents of schoolchildren across the country, and found that for them, "economics and accountability are webbed in a number of other deeply felt concerns," ultimately concluding "The politician who can understand and express in policy those concerns will tap into something powerful." Has either one of the candidates proposed a policy that will tap into that "something powerful"?
Given my own life history as someone who comes from a low-income family -- and I think that my situation is typical of a whole lot of folks out there -- what strikes me about the Obama plan is that it yields an understanding of the lives of families like mine that we just don't find in McCain's. Obama's discussion of education demonstrates an understanding of educational opportunity for people who don't have an easy time of it. Education doesn't just involve test scores bouncing up. Education is about being prepared for the economic realm, but it's also about kids feeling secure, and kids being in environments that suggest they're worth something. All of this adds up to what it means to have a sense that you have a future, which emerges particularly in Obama's speeches. I just don't find that kind of texture or spirit in the McCain plan.
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To read the candidates' platforms for yourself see McCain's plan and Obama's plan.
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I'm glad this article was presented. This shallow notion that vouchers and choice are the sole answer and the great equalizer in American education is so shallow and does not offer any real solutions. It's just another privileging and marginalizing system. The public school system is the foundation- the safety net for sustaining the American way of life. Without it - we're finished.
Friedman actually advocated The Little Red Schoolhouse concept of smaller schools and districts that were pared down to the smaller community. His theories have been raped and tortured by the current
powers that be. That classes are overcrowded and districts too large to effectively manage, particularly in the larger urban areas, is succinctly the problem. Frost that cake with children who come to school hungry, sick, uninsured, with parents who may be unemployed, drug or alcohol dependant, absent, maybe even in gangs themselves. Some are living in foster or group homes, some with older siblings or grandparents who all may be struggling as well. Dust it off with 35-40% who have either ADHD or a panaply of other learning challenges, it isn't surprising that 50% drop out.
Clearly the Union is not the culprit! Socio-political-economic realities of 2008 have made children-a million of whom are uninsured--the truest victims.
Those who knock the union could not imagine themselves working in such an environment. But its the reality...and somehow, education must take place. It's only fair that those dedicated to making it happen for students everyday should be able to take care of themselves and their families. The union is not the enemy. All the factors you mention impact the "problem".
The following applies to any public good, not just education...
When you rely on private enterprise to provide a public good it will do a superb job of providing high qualty service where it is profitable to do so. Where it is not profitable to do so they will cut corners until it is profitable. No quantity of competition will avoid the cost cutting because nobody is going to start a business with a business plan that does have a positive bottom line.
So, great service for the rich areas (who already have elite private acadamies anyhow) and cost cutting in the poor areas until it shows a profit or until government steps in.
Just like our health care system.
One issue to choice that involves private schools is the fact that all of them have the option to remove disruptive students permanently. Where will they go? Back to the public schools. And with "No Child Left Behind" the government still has a responsiblity to those children. What is the plan for those students? McCain hasn't addressed this, and I don't expect that he will.
As an educator, I'm happy to see this. When people ask my how I'm voting, I tell them that this outlook is worth my support.
I would NOT want you to educate my child.
You are one scary educator....
Your response puzzles me. What frightens you about it?
School vouchers and to a lesser extent, academy or charter schools, are among the last policy remnants of the now tattered Friedmanite ideology, as the would-be emperors Reagan and Thatcher are finally seen for transparent, empty vessels they really were.
As we (hopefully) move to a state of affairs where government intervention and market forces are balanced for the good of society and not just for the good of hedge fund managers, it's time for a fresh view of education (not to mention health care and social security). With a Democratic congress behind him, Obama has a great shot at reform. Let's just hope he can move quickly enough to do it. Mike Rose is clearly someone who should be closely informing the decision-making process.
A thought-provoking interview. Good job.
What a great article! Why would we compete with ourselves when something so important lies in the balance? Cooperation is desirable.
The one big barrier to reforming the education system is the Teacher's Union. I support unions in general, but the Teacher's Union is the most corrupt. When they don;t fire child molesters and keep them on payroll. they lost the public trust.
Destroy the Teacher's Union
Where is your evidence that the teacher's unions are most corrupt. It is easy to sling accusations when you are not involved in that profession. While there certainly have been areas that need improvement in teacher's unions, as with other organizations, they have also been responsible for the elevation of teachers as professionals and not just paid labor.
Without representation, teachers would not have received salaries in order to live at a decent level. In states or areas without decent representation, that is still the case.
Without representation, teachers would be working long hours without adequate planning time and breaks that other people take for granted. If people want the best, possible lessons for their children, then teachers need to be able to have the time to plan innovative units of study. In areas without representation, teachers have no time and need to take ridiculous amounts of personal time to meet their students' needs. Working "off the clock" is not accepatble to most people, and teachers are no different.
The situation that Dystopic describes is rare compared to the frequency of unfair attacks on teachers from disgruntled parents or administrators. When school systems fail to protect teachers in these situations, the teacher's associations step in.
A teacher's job is tough enough without expecting them to deal with less pay, longer working hours and no protection from false accusations. Given the history of the profession, I wouldn't expect the public to take over the role that the teacher's associations have played.
As a parent, I too have found the Teacher's Union to take stands against what I believe would be fair to the children, classroom and community at the 'advantage' of their membership. But it is a big union that encompasses a variety of members.
Bib, my mother was a teacher who did not join the union and worked outside the union system. She was very effective with the children. She was seen as a professional. She had plenty of time to do her job and raise our family. She was seen as an honored member of the community she taught in, too.
Nothing is ever totally one way or the other.
While, I don't think it's corruption or that the union should be destroyed. I do wish for some new perspectives to come forward.
Public school choice, and its corollary, vouchers, are simply Republican vehicles to destroy the public education system, and force students into parochial schools (madrasas) where they can be indoctrinated by right wing prelates. It is also the old South's last attempt to re-institute segregated schools. Just think back to the 1950's through roughly the early 1970's when there was essentially no school choice. Unless your parents really wanted you to go to parochial school, or you were fantastically wealthy and went to a traditional private school for rich kids. There was a standard curriculum, pretty much followed all over the country. That curriculum took us to the moon, developed the internet, the computer revolution, the biotech revolution, etc. If we went "back to the future" to a slightly modernized version of the traditional curriculum, there would be higher scores, no achievement gap, and no need for "school choice". Regarding segregation, trust me, I live in the South. Ever since 1954 "academies" have been developed by all the conservative (segregationist) churches. The parents hate having to pay to keep their kids from associating with blacks, so they hope that the Republicans will somehow figure out how to hoodwink the public into supporting vouchers. Meanwhile, every attempt is made to reduce public school spending, worsening the quality of the public schools and driving anyone who can afford it to private schools. The hope is that this will ultimately become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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