Should schools be ran like businesses, or remain publicly funded & operated?

[AnArmyVeteran]

Should schools be ran like businesses, each with their own corporate hierarchy controlled by people who only think about profit? Or should we keep and improve our publicly funded and operated schools? Thomas Jefferson was a big proponent of public education. But conservatives want to turn our education system into a business. Of course with any business 'profit' is the only goal, not teaching students. Just like in any other business they will overwork and underpay the teachers whose task it is to teach our children.

Conservatives believe business is the solution to every problem. But look at what big business had done to our country. It caused an economic meltdown causing huge loss of employment, massive numbers of foreclosures and the losses of millions of peoples' retirements. And of course, big business and deregulation caused the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which has destroyed untold number of wildlife, killed 11 workers, drove one man to suicide and destroyed the financial lives of millions of people who depend on the Gulf to make their livings. The BP disaster is just beginning its destruction and the amount of oil already in the water or still gushing out from the corporate hole in the bottom of the Gulf will contaminate sea life for decades, or longer.

A great video that compares the two systems is at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EmkTvpi_ZM&feature=channel

We need to pull the plug on capitalism. We the people need to wake up and be the death panel that decides we've had enough and terminate this diseased system that is destroying our country.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. The Blueberry Story

The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice.  Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”

I was convinced of two things.  First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society”.  Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.  They needed to look to business.  We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced - equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up.  She appeared polite, pleasant – she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”

I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”

“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”

“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.

“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.

“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.”  I was on a roll.  I never saw the next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap….  I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie.

“I send them back.”

“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries.  We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant.  We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all!  Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business.  It’s school!”

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business.  Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.


Copyright 2002, by Jamie Robert Vollmer

Jamie Robert Vollmer, a former business executive and attorney, now works as a motivational speaker and consultant to increase community support for public schools. He can be reached at [e-mail]

http://www.jamievollmer.com/blue_story.html

[AnArmyVeteran]

13. Great story proud2BlibKansan... and so true.

But standardized testing has had the opposite effect. And top down education systems have virtually silenced teachers. At one time teachers were given the upmost respect and parents sided with teachers when 'little Johnny' got into trouble or wasn't doing well. But now parents attack teachers. Teachers are underpaid and overworked. Under GW Bush he created an even more top down system making teachers teach the answers to the state mandated test, instead of allowing them to teach. Because of Bush, Texas led the nation in 10th grade dropout rates. Less than half of high school graduates could pass college entrance examinations.

The average amount of money a Texas teacher had to take out of their own pockets to get the supplies they needed to teach was $1,000. And that money wasn't compensated. Conservatives seem to hate teachers. Even Ron Paige, Bush's education secretary, called teachers unions 'Terrorist Groups'. Teachers unions have both negative and positive elements. But it's the only way teachers have any voice at all anymore. If a teacher speaks out against their principals or administration they are retaliated against. I know, I ran for a position on the school board to give teachers a voice. I received all the votes from teachers, but a right winger who worked for the company that owned the bank where the school district kept its money won. Even though he had conflicts of interest and sided with administration on every issue, he got the position on the board.

Because of Bush, school years started with 45,000 less teachers than they needed before each school year. Teacher morale plummeted. Only 50% of teachers polled said they would still be teaching within three years. But Gore never said a word of any of Bush's Texas disasters during the campaign or during the debates. He let the bumbling Bush off the hook and by not challenging Bush like he should have he put our country on the hook with economic collapse, two useless wars, deregulation and the worst environmental disaster in our history.

Thanks for your great article! I'm going to remember that one.


[e-mail]

Blueberry Story on why schools can't be ran like businesses:
http://www.jamievollmer.com/blue_story.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. Thank you

I'm hoping you'll run for school board again.

[AnArmyVeteran]

19. I live in a very conservative area. It's almost impossible to win unless you're a redneck.

[Selatius]

2. You have inputs and outputs in a business.

An input would be like the raw materials you need to make a product, and of course, the output would be the products that go on to be sold.

When you make it a business to create potato bread, you make sure you get the best potatoes around. You look at them. Hold them up. Inspect them. Choose the ones that are good. Toss the rest.

You can't do that with children. You must take them ALL regardless of their backgrounds or learning disabilities if any.

[KonaKane]

3. A sure formula for disaster.

If big business ran the education system, it virtually shut out all kids who's parents didn't have the money to put them through the school. Thereby making basic education a thing of the elite, another stratifying element in a tightening class war.

Conservatives like the idea of private education because it was the only thing that would pass a puddin head like GWB, the C- student who barely squeaked through thanks to his family ties and money.

[OHdem10]

4. Our Government was run like a business--Remember GWB

and the Media making a big deal about this.

Our Government and economy have ended up about like
Enron leaving us facing a Great Depression.

Is this the way schools should be run??? I do not think
so.

[MichiganVote]

5. FAPE/ Free Appropriate Public Education, its the current law.

They have to get over this hurdle.

[Overseas]

6. Privatization is very destructive.

Quarterly profits outrank the public good.

[bluestateguy]

7. Business principles belong in the business world

I'm all for private schools too, but not on the government's dime.

[notesdev]

8. There's a middle ground

They can be publicly funded and operated, but it should be local funds and operators who can't run off to some far-off capital city where they can remain ignorant of the needs of the people they are supposed to be serving.

[JDPriestly]

9. Businesses that are locally connected, responsive to local needs, to real people

and to their environment are valuable to our country. Businesses that are owned primarily by people living in foreign countries who are exploiting our market are destructive.

I try to buy from local markets as much as possible. But it is really hard because undercapitalized small businesses have to be very well managed and have to really connect to the needs of customers in order to survive. Still, look how the Farmer's Market concept has taken off especially in recent years. That is the extreme example of local merchants appealing to local markets.

I believe that the big corporations are going to find that their customer bases are disappointed in them and no longer willing to buy what they have to offer -- unless the customers can't get what they are offering anywhere else.

[saltpoint]

10. All public, all the time. Madison and Jefferson's notion of

an informed citizenry moves the methods by which the citizenry is informed to the level of national imperative.

Public education is under savage assault by the Pukes because an informed citizenry is exactly what they don't want.

[TalkingDog]

11. No, they should be run like trade schools, guilds and ateliers

My only issue with the public school system (which is now coming around to my way of thinking) is that we teach facts divorced from concrete reality. There are dozens of apocryphal tales of kids who can't do basic math or understand how to balance a check book, that run drug operations or work in bowling alleys double checking bowling scores. They have the capacity to do math, but no one ever explained the connection between what happens in the classroom and how they can use it to their advantage as soon as they leave the school grounds.

Every child I've ever EVER had a conversation with tells me they hate math because they'll never use it. I've never had one child tell me their teacher explained how solving for X could be useful in every day life. Although if you've ever had a recipe where you knew how many cups worth of ingredients you end up with and yet one of the items was missing it's measure, you had to solve for X.

The first kids out West who got national attention because they were homeschooled (basically starting the homeschool craze) and yet all of them had outstanding test scores and made their way into top notch colleges, never sat down and learned facts divorced from reality. When he was interviewed for Newsweek (I think it was newsweek) their father said they didn't sit down at desks and learn. They learned "on the job" by working around the farm. They learned the science of electricity, voltage, amps, watts and etc....as they were rewiring the barn. They learned geometry by building structures. They learned critical thinking by All of the Above....

Can everybody teach their kids this way? Well, the answer to that is sadly obvious. We need good patient teachers who can work with different types of children and within different constraints. But we also need to quit parking kids behind desks only to turn out kids who know a bunch of facts, but have no idea how to use them.

[LWolf]

12. Schools aren't businesses, and the persistent determination

to frame and run them that way is degrading the quality and potential of public education. I see Proud gave you the Blueberry story, which says enough for me. There are some other great responses in this thread already, so all I will do is add my agreement to your OP.

k&r

[RainDog]

14. just fyi should be: "be run." n/t

[AnArmyVeteran]

15. I will fall on my sword for my typo, ala John Belushi...

t/y

[RainDog]

16. my h.s. senior english teacher still lives in my soul...

I can still remember poems I had to memorize for her class.

[AnArmyVeteran]

21. That's cool you could still remember poems!

I still remember all the words to the Preamble to the Constitution. I bet not one tea bagger can do that.

PS: I'm going to really watch my spelling or use of words when I respond to any of your psots! :)

[Greyhound]

18. How about neither?

First, I agree that the administration couldn't do worse if they were actively trying to kill American education entirely.

But, we also have to admit that the system adopted by virtually every community in the U.S. is just about the worst of all options.

We do need national standards, but tests are not a substitute for standards.

We do need more money diverted to education, but allowing administrations to suck up the lion's share will always yield the dysfunction we see everywhere (LAUSD has got to be the poster child for this insanity).

And mostly, we absolutely must combat the anti-intellectualism that runs through just about every level of our society. The path we're on leads nowhere but to disaster.

Stupid is not cool, it's just stupid.

[RandomThoughts]

20. Will there be beer and smokes at the disaster?

When you think about it, why would it really matter? At any point something not acceptable is not acceptable.

It does not matter if one thing is more or less not acceptable. If you are not at the line that is acceptable, then why would the other stuff matter.

Keep moving things till it gets acceptable.



On the topic of teachers, they should have job security including unions. Yes that might make it for a few teachers that are not as good still teaching, but it will also stop them from fearing being fired for expressing viewpoints.

Without tenure and unions, teachers become an extension of some benchmark they are told to teach to, it is authoritarian. It is better to have some teachers not as good, then for teachers to worry about losing jobs and wages if they teach based on their experiences and thoughts on many issues.


AC/DC - Thunderstruck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvoeeq-BH4w

[dorkulon]

22. I'm actually not sure.

Seems to me that private schools do a better job of educating kids for less money. Of course, there are a number of other factors involved: Kids that go to private schools come from families that are more affluent, more educated and more engaged in their child's education, broadly speaking. So it's not a fair comparison. So, as I said, I don't really know.

But calling what happens in this country 'capitalism' is just as erroneous as calling the Soviet Union 'communism'. Neither is either; what they have in common is corruption.

EDIT: after re-reading the OP, I have to say that I am QUITE sure that education should be publicly funded, including college. The "not sure" part is for public operation.