The War Against America`s Public Schools-Privatizing Schools, Commercializing Education

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Book Review
By Frosty Troy
Editor of The Oklahoma Observer

The War Against America`s Public Schools: Privatizing Schools, Commercializing Education
By Gerald W. Bracey,
(Allyn and Bacon), 213 pp. $24-To Order Call 800/666-9433

There`s nothing polite about Gerald Bracey`s detailed description of the impact of vouchers, charters, and the profit-making education industry on K-12 public schools.

The Stanford-educated research psychologist`s book offers an eye-opening account of the motives, the money, and the questionable legal and ethical maneuverings behind the push to privatize and commercialize public education.

From the outset, Bracey admits public schools need reform.

"Too many schools still bore too many kinds," he says. But, he adds, "the real agenda of many enemies of public schools" is to dismantle, not reform the current system.

"Getting the government out of schools is part of the conservative agenda." Bracey says.

He chastises political and religious conservatives, and some in higher education for "distorted" testing data that label public schools as "failing."

It`s one way, he says, to grab educational dollars for charters, vouchers, for-profit alternatives, and even academic research.

Such misinterpretation of data is rampant, says Bracey, citing scores on the SATs, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) as ripe for misuse.

Blasting U.S. 12th graders for a low worldwide ranking in science is absurd, Bracey says, because of the vast international differences in curriculum and student participation. Top-ranked Scandinavian students study three times as much physics as their U.S. counterparts and most countries picked the cream of their student crop for two out of three TIMSS tests.

The United States was only one of five countries with a representative sample for all exams. Bracey likens the TIMSS rankings to comparing "apples to aardvarks."

His chapter on: Charter schools, publicly funded but free of bureaucracy," tells of wasted money, little accountability, and not much innovation.

Bracey cites a common scenario: "The visionary opens a charter without the practical management skills to operate it, burns out, and turns the school over to a private, for-profit school-management firm."

These firms, he says, are famous for canned curriculum and low teacher salaries.

Faced with weak, short-staffed oversight agencies, school districts have granted charters while paying little attention to evaluation, says Bracey. A UCLA study found schools lost charters for financial irregularities, not for failure to meet academic goals.

And, he adds, when successful practices do emerge they rarely spread to public schools, as they should in theory, because there`s seldom a mechanism for sharing information.

Although most for-profit education firms have failed to emerge from the red, there`s great moneymaking potential, says Bracey, especially with the ongoing effort to erode confidence in public schools.

Since our schools impart a common idea of good citizenship, he`s concerned that for-profit schools, lacking public scrutiny of curriculum and finances, might pose "a threat to democracy."

Bracey has no faith that the private sector will treat education any differently than manufacturing where, he says, "neglect of standards and quality in favor of profits is the order of the day."

Voucher-programs have faced voter opposition, court challenges and heated debate at the federal level. Now some are steering clear of the "voucher" name tag, but no matter what it`s called, the program still drains money and students from public schools.

They call them "opportunity scholarships" and other misnomers-principally because poll after poll reveals that as many as 70% of Americans oppose using public money for private schools.

Like charters, voucher programs have largely avoided evaluation, adds Bracey. "It is more than a bit ironic that choice advocates, claiming the public schools need to be more accountable, have thus far largely succeeded in avoiding accountability for their own endeavors."

Dense with facts and figures about all the minor players and issues in the privatizing/charter debate, Bracey`s newest work is a great handbook for besieged public school educators and advocates.

He doesn`t pretend to offer solutions for needed reform-just a warning that public schools are in danger and much too precious to let go without a fight.

Reprinted by permission from The Oklahoma Observer [PO Box 53371, Oklahoma City, OK 73152], February 10, 2002, 14.