CORPORATE INFLUENCE IN THE U.S. PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM: History, Reformers, Propaganda, and Privatization Ryan Genova, M. Ed.

April 2013

Abstract Recent decades have seen an unprecedented transformation in public education, in which a broad range of stakeholders have attempted to alter the education available to the nations youth. During the same time period, public schools have seen a renaissance in the privatization, models of evaluation, student sorting, and segregation that typified the early twentieth century. As the discussions of national wealthy disparity and economic decline reach an unprecedented pitch, this Note argues that the most pervasive shifts in public education its basic utilities at the crux of each argumenthave come from corporate activism in policy decisions. Part I opens the discussion by briefly addressing national paradigm shifts in the fundamental purposes of education. Part II provides a historical context of public educations involvement with business leaders, framed by three periods of national economic restructuring. Part III addresses current reform subsidiaries, followed by Part IVs redressing of doctrinal claims employed in propaganda strategies. Part V concludes with public educations present alternative: an aggrandized private system championed by corporate reform. Historically, legislation shaped by corporate reformers promulgates upward mobility for the poor, the creation of an equitable playing field, and improvement for the nation as a functioning whole. But Ansley Ericksons eloquent statement on the matter cannot be improved: Rarely in American history have public goods moved from doing service for the elite and powerful to become tools for disadvantaged communities. When the rhetoric suggests that choice has become such a tool, we should pay close and skeptical attention.1

I. The Purpose of Education Some of the sea changes in education have been for the better. Past disenfranchised student subgroups (females, immigrants, students with different needs, hyphenated Americans) achieved significantly higher levels of equity after the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s. English as a Second Language (ESL) programs and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) became legally mandated for students who were once considered uneducable and warehoused in altogether different buildings. The responsiveness to social activism additionally steered a profoundly Eurocentric curriculum toward a more cultural and heterogeneous offering of courses.2 In lieu of a one size fits all pedagogy, attention to Howard Gardners Multiple Intelligences Theory has fostered differentiated instruction for student-specific modalities.3 Shifts to the inherent purposes of learning, however, have been differently motivated. Early in the United States history, families, churches, apprenticeships, and communities augmented the roles of schools to help create an informed, capable and democratized citizenry through civic responsibility.4 As higher percentages of the population enrolled in public schools, reformers redefined the fundamental purposes of education from a collective social benefit to one of workforce preparation - an extrinsic means to an end in which student outcomes are defined by performance and related to national interests. The ideology, still alive and well today, aligns educational goals with economic productivity, and claims to measure and compare each student and school through scientific procedures.5 Creative pursuits of the individual, constructivist learning and inquiry-based pedagogies have been diminished and devalued by this shift. An economically-driven education has typically included the comprehensive standardization of textbooks, curriculum, certification, financing, buildings, and teaching methods. This charge has been accompanied by funding decreases in trivial and quadrivial liberal arts and an increased emphasis on STEM subjects - science, technology and mathematics. As higher percentages of the U.S. population enrolled in colleges and universities, higher education has also been reformed from a collective social benefit to one of personal gain to be financed by the direct benefactor.6 An institution once offering low tuition with ancillary funding coming from the public,7* current college costs are rising at six times the rate of inflation8 as state appropriations for aid are falling.9 Though still considered a lighthouse system, degree inflation has enrolled a more diverse student population through which the university loan infrastructure, largely driven by banks and the private sector, has dropped the lower classes into often unmanageable levels of debt.10 Currently, student loan liabilities in the United States top $1 trillion.11 With fewer and fewer public endowments, universities have less pressure to lower costs, despite a theoretically competitive system. Capitalistic policies have repackaged knowledge as a commodity for personal use, as opposed to a public good to be shared, embraced, and supported, both financially and
Recently, however, prestigious universities MIT, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan have pioneered MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) managed by private companies and offered to the public at no cost. As the venture is still largely experimental, it remains to be seen how this new trend will develop over time. Still, tens of thousands of students have completed the courses, with hundreds of thousands of new enrollments. See Harvard, MIT to Partner to Offer Free Online Courses. Larry Gordon. Los Angeles Times. May 3, 2012 and Harvard and M.I.T. Team Up to Offer Free Online Online Courses. Tama Lewin. The New York Times. May 2, 2012.
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ideologically, by all citizenry.12 Copyright law and minimum standards of intellectual property (IP) have given rise to the globalized concept of private rights to knowledge goods.13 Through corporate sponsorship and strong nationalist language, the government usurped the roles of local authorities to establish a highly centralized, top-down federal system. As federalization, administrative power, and regulation expanded over time, diverse views about how and what students should learn bottlenecked. More and more, such decisions and responsibilities have been relegated to distant figures in centralized institutions. It is a trend that is likely to continue. By leveraging its extreme wealth, the business community has influenced and deregulated domestic and international policy, as well as political elections.* Historically, government-politico partnerships have undermined egalitarianism by removing institutional members from the processes of decision making. In this way, the educational landscape is emblematic of a broad and deeply historical national trend in which a representative democracy is controlled by a neoliberalistic, unelected, and often wealthy hegemony with little public accountability.14 Against this trend, Kovacs and Christie wrote, When corporate leaders shape government institutions according to their needs, countries move away from democracy and toward corporatism, a relative of, and arguably a precursor to, fascism.15

II. A Historical Briefing of Corporate Involvement From a historical perspective, movements during periods of economic restructuring have lured business leaders to the table of reform. The United States has experienced three economic shifts: the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and a third Postindustrial shift to an economy dominated by services. This section highlights business involvement and its effects in public education initiatives and policy during these periods. The Gilded Age (1865 1900)16 The genesis of the modern U.S. public school system was in part an attempt to feed a burgeoning manufacturing sector after the American Revolution.17 Uniformity, obedience, discipline, and conformity were the movements end designs, unified by the common goal of transitional preparation for the working class. Manufacturers needed laborers to follow specific, orderly procedures, which necessitated a creation of an orderly cultural template, distinctive by its own rules and form. A uniform curriculum followed, accompanied by standardized textbooks, a lockstepped grading system based on proficiency, age-grouping, the multifurcate of study into subjects, and a self-contained
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In U.S. electoral politics, the wealthiest 25 percent of the population contribute 80 percent of all individual political monetary gifts, and corporations spend ten times more than labor. This trend has worsened still after the Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Committee, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) Supreme Court appeal in which The judgment of the District Court [was] reversed with respect to the constitutionality of 2 U. S. C. 441bs restrictions on corporate independent expenditures. See Liptak, Adam. (January 21, 2010). Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit. The New York Times for a brief overview; http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/08-205P.ZO for a .pdf of the case in full.

teacher-centered classroom. Teachers were handed courses by grade level created by the superintendent.18 Public schools were also an appeal to political faith led by the millenialist rhetoric of Massachusetts politician Horace Mann. Framed with an evangelist appeal, he declared that a proper education could ameliorate the lives of the poor through a common state school system. After the proposals acceptance by state legislature in 1837, other states followed the Massachusetts precedent and established many of the fundamental structures of public education present today. As common schools grew in number and enrollment, teacher training became more systemic, leading to an emergence of State Normal Schools and private academies in the mid-eighteenth century.19 The Progressive Era (1890 1910) As the United States moved towards industrialism, the twentieth century continued to model education after manufacturers preferences.20 Attendance increased after education became compulsory by law, particularly for children of immigrants.21 The nature of schooling remained predominantly one of submission, comprised of daily examinations, recitations, and strict student control by oligarchic orders and procedures. Allowing students the freedom to pursue ones individual interests, or a democratized referendum among the student body, was punished by withdrawing state funds.22 Standardized testing saw its first appearance in public schools.23 Progressive public schools were funded by local taxpayer support and directed by independent districts.24 After 1910, vocational education was added to the white-collar curriculum as a mechanism to train the technicians and skilled workers needed by the expanding industrial sector.25 The popular labor productivity model of the early 1900s, scientific management today know as efficiency - began being wielded as a tool to shape and evaluate schools and administrators. John Franklin Bobbitt helped drive scientific management concepts into the development and studies of curricula, the underpinnings of which were based on the work of Frederick Taylors factory production system. Taylorism a sign of both progress and scientific management - sought to streamline production by systematically analyzing all facets of employee production to help management to make production more efficient. Conceptually, manifestations of the movement were curricular objectives and standards, supported by the alleged science behind these processes and theories.26 Bobbits vision was shared by other leaders in the early years of the century, and demurred by John Dewey and other progressivists. Standards and objectives downplayed the role of a teacher to a subservient purveyor of an administrators will; the best methods of education were to be left to augers, superintendents, and principals. Bobbit concurrently campaigned for teacher merit-pay according to ratings dictated by Tayloristic reforms. Such reforms resembled an assembly line in which the students are the products, teachers the hands-on laborers sculpting and programming the raw materials, and administrators the managers of the process using the most efficient and scientific methods.27 Thus education became a means to a specified, pre-determined end in which individual curiosities and ambitions by either teacher or student had little to no place or value. Learning was to be linear and easily assessed. Teachers did not have the

wherewithal to develop curricula, it was believed, nor had they expertise in instructional content and methods. Evaluation to ensure compliance from specialists and administrators was a necessary construct of the process. These implications have helped shape the way hierarchical education is viewed, practiced, and accepted by the United States today,28 though Taylorism was largely modified after its unpleasant tendency to deskill and dehumanize the workers and the workplace.29 Prominent business leaders many with similar backgrounds, values, and interests ousted working class members from local school boards posts in order to invoke a tracking system favored by social elites.30 State legislatures claimed that reforms were necessary to keep politics out of education, and that educational decisions be left to professionals. An increased responsiveness to working class demands and an expanding immigrant population was viewed as a threat by the business community, resulting in a propaganda campaign aimed at disarming local boards and further empowering administrators.31 Collaboration with like-minded dignitaries, foundations, and big business was vital to the prescription of needed progress. John D. Rockefeller, the magnate of the early 20th century, had his own General Education Board to influence policy and decision-making, garnering concerns from the American Federation of Labor that education was becoming Rockefellerized.32 Talks of minimizing, if not abrogating, local school board power subsisted from education leaders. With the help of the business community, the reformers decimated central board numbers by an average of twenty-one to seven in cities greater than 100,000 residents.33 A common thread among these vicissitudes was the axiomatic conviction of many elites that their agendas were in the best interests of the nation, the schools, and the students. Any polemics were dismissed as hinderers to the progress of education and the United States. The aggregated national statistics on education showing deep-seated inequalities in race, gender, income, familial background, immigrant and disability status were equally ignored or dismissed. The common school epithet had not yet come to fruition: particularly in the South, Blacks were legally mandated to attend separate schools in poorer conditions and with fewer resources. Students with special needs were often considered uneducable and excluded from schools completely. In spite of standardization rhetoric, funding was transparently unequal from district to district, with less affluent and less resourceful rural areas paradoxically receiving less state aid to build schools and pay teachers than urban areas. Though national literacy and retention rates had climbed across the board, graduation rates reflected inequity: in 1940, 30 percent of urban students received a high school degree, while only 12 percent of rural students graduated. That two out of three Blacks were rural residents during the same time period tacitly adduced the racial and cultural imperialism of the White education leaders.34 Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, influential philanthropies funded by business fortunesthe Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundationimplemented an academic tracking system via intelligence testing. These instruments intensified and justified the child sorting process; students were already seen as inherently different according to ability, interest, and destiny, and through the doctrine of educational science, these children were given different types of education.35

Post-Industrial Service Economy (1950 Present)36* The GI Bill was a conservative compromise to liberal calls for large-scale aid to education. It awarded tuition and expenses to millions of World War II veterans to attend institutions of higher education, and helped popularize the perceived necessity of a college education. As a result of the influx of students, the 1950s saw influence in higher education from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and corporate advocates pressing to instill business values on university campuses.37 The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), busy for decades with expansive propaganda activities to coordinate business opposition to the New Deal, began distributing pamphlets, motion pictures, classroom kits, and training courses for teachers at no cost to school districts. NAMs classroom materials represented the core of business efforts to change community values in the selling of business itself. Nationwide economic education campaigns demurred unionslikening them to communismand praised free market ideologies as a means to coerce the young public into pro-business beliefs.38 One in five corporations maintained similar pro-bono strategies in schools, including Coca-Cola, International Harvester, American Petroleum Institute, U.S. Steel, General Electric, General Motors, American Cyanamid, and Standard Oil. The extensiveness of student propagation was unprecedented. By 1954, major U.S. corporations were supplying schools with $50 million of free materials, while schools were annually spending $100 million on regular textbooks.39 At the same time, basic education policy was relatively unapproached by outside ideologies and actors. Schools were again left to school boards, and politics were relatively uninvolved in decision making. Racial segregation and extreme disparities in resources between rural and urban schools remained highly visible and generally accepted by the public, education, and business communities.40 Two keynote events ended the politically tranquil golden age of education: 1954s Brown v. Board of Education trial and the launching of the Soviet Unions Sputnik satellite in 1957.41 The Brown case proved immensely helpful to the integration of minority student subgroups, but the Soviets success proved detrimental to the general reputation of the U.S. public education system. Sputnik marked the first time that the vernacular of public education became significantly tethered to the United States conditions. Characteristic of a self-critical national mindset was the perceived superiority of the Soviets. American scientists had the capability to launch a satellite over a year before the Soviets,42 but media outlets were instrumental in popularizing the belief that the United States was in decline. Media claims were inflated by U.S. News & World Report interviews We Are Less Educated Than 50 Years Ago43 pre-launch and What Went Wrong with U.S. Schools44 post-launch. Widespread apocalyptic language about

The share of the service sector in value-added has grown steadily from 60 percent in 1950 to 80 percent in 1980, and this increase is explained by the growth in the consumption of services. See: The Rise of the Service Economy. Francisco J. Buera and Joseph P. Kaboski. (March 2009). National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 14822.

lowered academic standards and the nations inability to keep up with foreign competitors filled discussions about the alleged needs for public education reform.45 A pattern identifying public education as the culprit for U.S. laggings, and ignoring public education in terms of U.S. successes, emerged. Apollo 11 - the 1969 spaceflight in which Americans successfully landed the first humans on the moon - may serve as a landmark example. Public schools received no redemption for the missions success, though all 53 NASA scientists and engineers captaining the mission had finished high school before 1958.46 As the economy fluctuated from decade to decade, the rhetoric remained vigilant against schools, teachers, and the failure of the education system.47 In considering the berating of public education, author and education leader John Jay Bonstingl observed:
Never mind that the captains of failing U.S. industry were themselves educated in U.S. schools not in the 1980s but in the 1940s and 50s - the supposed golden age of U.S. society and U.S. education. Never mind that implied cause of our countrys poor economic and industrial health in the early 1980s was pinned on the educational failure of people who were only kids during the economic decline.48

Several large defense contractors saw a vast potential market in the schools as spending on the Vietnam War waned. In 1970 President Richard Nixons Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) contracted six companies to raise standardized test scores (this coincided with the federal government subsidizing twenty additional performance contracts). 49 It was also during the 1970s that charter schools were conceived by teacher Ray Budde, and began to thrive under Albert Shanker, longtime American Federation of Teachers president, until the divisive nature of chartering grounded his departure.50 Enrollment and graduation rates ascended to 90 percent and 71 percent in 1980, respectively. A conservative-friendly motif was cycling back through state missives, producing a return to rote memorization, convergent thinking, and direct instruction. Though an unintended outcome, the press for back to basics instruction more math and science for all students elucidates why career options for females improved during this time. Science, math, and technical fields were no longer relegated to males.51 With declining corporate profits in part due to an increasingly competitive global market, latent concepts about systemic reform resurfaced during the 1980s. The milieu had dramatically changed from the series of societal and educational shifts from the 1960s and 1970s, inviting a new consortium of foundations and Republican think-tanks.52 Governors and business executives filled the vacuum created by national uncertainty and decimated levels of power by local and state policy makers. Driven by claims of waning global competitiveness, the purported decline of public education allowed business elites to promote market solutions, comeuppances, and accountability.53 The economist Milton Friedman, founder of the modern conception of vouchers, partnered with President Ronald Reagan, the earliest president to advocate parental choice of schools. While in office, Reagan committed himself to the promotion of vouchers, merit-pay, and tax credits for private school students.54 Under an administration that pledged to abolish the Department of Education,55 the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a seminal report, A Nation At Risk, (1983) that portended the dialogue and shifts in the coming years. The report circulated through the education and business sectors, and its ideologies explicitly

promoted centralization of control, stating the federal government has the primary responsibility to identify the national interest in education.56 Six years later, the Education Summit of 1989 gathered the nations governors to discuss the implementation of six national educational goals. Championed by Republican George H. W. Bushs Education President platform, the Summit annealed the notion that deregulation and federalization were necessary and desirable to national interests particularly economic competition and defense and created a standardized approach to learning and accountability for schools, students, and teachers.57 The attendees produced America 2000, an initiative to increase standardized testing and content standards, through which steady progress towards national proficiency was to be made by the year 2000.58 For such massive changes to become politically palatable, the ideas were indefatigably marketed to the public as the only viable option to improve international competitiveness and student achievement.59 Though unpublicized, the initiatives laid out by the Summits fifty governors were transparently similar to educational goals created a few months before at an annual Business Roundtable (BRT) meeting. Governors were socialized, if not bought outright through corporate donations to campaign coffers.60 The following year, the Business Roundtable Education Task Force lobbied state representatives to adopt the first three of BRTs nine Essential Components: state content standards, state-mandated tests, and incentivized test results. Nine years later, however, only 20 state legislatures had adopted high-stakes legislation. State BRT organizations had work[ed] to raise expectations for student learning, many [were] challenged by concerns and questions from increasingly vocal parents and teachers. To combat public criticism, the BRT published a manual advising business coalitions and standards advocateson how to address the testing backlash.61 Democratic President Bill Clinton, along with highly involved advisory board members, governors, and business executives, reissued Bushs America 2000 dubbed Goals 2000 - featuring a few minor distinctions.62 Slowly but surely, funding became tied to student performance, as states were required to develop and implement standards and assessments in exchange for federal aid.63 By the 2000s, venture philanthropists seeking to have a hand in education reform had gained significant amounts of power. Business leaders were invited to learn about using data to reform education at the Business and Education 2002 Conference: The New Era of Education Reform - Corporate Opportunities to Strengthen Tomorrows Workforce. The conference was co-directed by the National Alliance of Business (NAB) and featured the director of the Education Trust, the vice president of Prudential Financial, Inc., and the CEO of State Farm Insurance Companies, along with numerous other panel members with corporate connections. In 2005, governors, policy makers, and business leaders met again to discuss similar issues.64 The push for standards and accountability culminated in G. W. Bushs No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the most pervasive educational footprint left by any president to date.65 The ESEA reauthorization required that all school districts receiving Title I funding maintain rigorous academic standards and required that all students attain proficiency within by the 2013-2014 school year.66 The statute mandated that states implement standards-based assessments in reading and math for grade 3-8 by the 20052006 school year, and that each school demonstrates Annual Yearly Progress (AYP).

NCLB concurrently required states to designate three categories to failing schools, including (1) improvement, (2) corrective action, and (3) restructuring.67 NCLB has failed to ratchet up achievement levels or create equitable opportunities for students throughout its nine-year lifespan, with only minor amendments to its basic tenets along the way.68 The legislations objectives have proven unrealistic, and the inconsistency within state implementation has further eroded its credibility in the eyes of the public and educators.69 By 2012, more than half of the participating states were waived of the goal of 100 percent proficiency.70 NCLB more than doubled the amount of standardized testing in schools and insists on gains and rates of progress that no school in history, including the top school systems in the world, has ever achieved.71 As Warren Simmons of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform notes, federal policies are effective only if the people they are intended to serve have a role in their development.72 Before NCLB, very little research had been conducted on high-stakes testing, and high-stakes theory has failed historically everywhere it has been implemented.73 The legislation may be the best example of the worst kind of legislation in which an agenda supercedes concern for students well-being. The Obama administration has made information on performance and progress a key part of their reform agenda, in addition to advocating merit pay and its attachment to student scores. Pursuant to the power delegated to it by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Department of Education, championed by incumbent Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, created the Race to the Top program.74 The reauthorization of ESEA was designed to incentivize states to develop and implement school improvement plans with $4.35 billion in available funds. Extremely pervasive in facets outside of the classroom, the legislation encourages states to implement merit pay systems, improve low-achieving schools, and expand charter schools through a competitive process and the promise of funds.75 The adoption of Common Core standards are only notionally voluntary to avoid a stigmatized view of overfederalization, but federal resources to states are increasingly tied to Race to the Top initiatives.76 Obfuscation of research has defined multiple facets of Race to the Top. In September 2010, Vanderbilt University announced the results of its POINT experiment that examined teacher merit pay in relation to student scores. The three-year study found that paying teachers bonuses based on their performance in the classroom did not raise student test scores.77 POINTs results align with decades of research in both the private and public sectors showing that performance pay at best produces positive short-term results, and at worst diminishes intrinsic motivation and overall longitudinal performance.78 Research on charter schools, school choice, and competition among schools via a market system has produced similarly negative outcomes, most significantly the inconsistency with which charters raise student achievement.79 The new legislation, like the original intent of ESEA, is touted as an agent for social change. The commonly purported thrust behind choice is to provide parents and students market alternatives to failing a descriptor pertaining to AYP mandates and unilaterally conferred by the U.S. Department of Education - schools. Because charter schools represent an alternative to public education, they have been adduced by the promarket sector as a panacea for the education system since Friedmans premise in 1955.

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Each President Ronald Reagan, George. H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George. W. Bush, and Barack Obama concertedly excluded practitioners from decisionmaking processes.80 In a fashion akin to the early twentieth century, education reform has been left to dignitaries, politicians, and professionals. Skepticism about the true intentions and eventual outcomes of unprecedented and inadequately researched reforms subsists from the lay public and teachers, but such concerns are outsized by the entrepreneurialism of dozens of business-led task forces and a well-organized information campaign about the need for accountability, standards, the relationship between the economy and education, and the benefits of market-based alternatives. Corporate leaders, unsatisfied with the performance of schools and the amount of funding wasted by current practices in schools, have reoriented state and federal education policies to fit their agenda. If the public remains unconvinced, it has been at least familiarized with the transparent and widely publicized goals of the business community.81

III. Subsidiaries of the Privatization Movement A litmus test for discerning one privatization agenda from another is a matter of examining probable outcomes of proposed or supported legislation. Though various motives can be identified at a level of the individual, the privatization of education can be described by three general motivations, often with imbrications: (1) Advantages of the Free-Market An ideology often associated with capitalism or neoliberalism holds that the private sector is a stronger alternative to education than governmental structures. Increased top-heavy centralization and role of the federal government over the last two decades has led to greater inefficiencies, wasteful spending, and poor, unsupported legislation, all of which have added a degree of legitimacy to this ethos. Paradoxically, principal causes behind these changes have been informed and directed by business leaders, many of whom simultaneously criticize the governments viability in guiding education reform. (2) Fostering Economic Growth A second ideology holds that educations raison detre is to serve the needs of Americas economy via transitional preparation for the future workforce. This contingency represents the national interest and defines achievement, education, and learning in austerely economic terms. (3) Profit A third furcation operates not from a contrasting ideology, but from self-serving interests. Profiteering from education is sought directly, and in tandem seeks to eradicate collective bargaining and unionization to advance the corporate circles in which business regents move. In some cases, profiteers have products in search of markets.82 Commercial interests include the multibillion dollar textbook industries, test publishing industries, test

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preparation industries, information technology and database tracking industries, contracting industries, and Education Management Organizations (EMOs), and for-profit charter schools.83 The following section provides descriptions of powerful subsidiaries of the privatization movement. The Business Roundtable and the Philanthropy Roundtable Since the 1970s, public and educational policy has been significantly affected by two leading conglomerates. The Philanthropy Roundtable and the Business Roundtable agreed on the promotion of conservative meritocracy and free enterprise and, drawing inspiration from Lewis Powells 1971 Manifesto,84 sought to use their personal wealth for legislative and ideological movements. Their far-reaching network of organizations generated a protocol for utilizing media constituents to engineer public consent for their common sense agendas. Think tanks developed ready-made legislation to be circulated by a host of public figures such as Dinesh DSouza, Chester Finn, Newt Gingrich, and Thomas Sowell, all of whom had received professional support and fellowships from like-minded philanthropies. Their relative success led to the founding of similar philanthropies by wealthy luminaries that are still in existence to date.85 In response to the corporate sectors declining profits in the 1960s, the Business Roundtable was actuated in 1972 by business elites seeking to align similar interests and leaders to advance corporate interests in public policy. By the late 1980s, the function of the Business Roundtable had shifted toward reforming public education. The nations top 300 CEOs that staffed the organization were instrumental in cementing current educational trendsaccountability and standards-based reforminto the public psyche.86 To date, powerful conservative philanthropies collectively referred to as the Philanthropy Roundtable - can be found influencing national campaigns in a concerted effort to privatize education. These organizations produce their own research and analyses, engage in state and national policy debate, and use the public sphere to promote education reform.87 Utilizing media outlets to engendering public compliance is a central focus of conservative philanthropies when legislation is passed supporting a particular agenda. Though at times equally implicated in the privatization movement, liberal ideologies are less represented in the media largely due to a lack of comparative resources, much like members of the working class are systematically disadvantaged when campaigning against the wealthy and powerful in an at-large election.88 Venture philanthropists expanded their resources, knowledge of leveraging wealth for political influence, and unapologetic panache during the economically booming 1990s. The unprecedented accumulation of wealth allowed millionaires and billionaires to transform the landscape of philanthropy into a new sort of venture capitalism in which tax shelters tacitly produce long-term financial returns. Compared to traditional benevolent philanthropy, venture philanthropy is hands-on and allows a direct role in public policy reform in which millions of dollars of donations are a means to organizational ensnarement. The top CEOs in the country, identifying themselves as venture philanthropists, formed committees to lobby for standardization and high-

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stakes testing. This has exerted an incredible amount of debilitating influence over schools, and has allowed the donators to claim control over their investments.89 Exacerbated by decades of consistent state defunding of public schools, education insolvency opened a window for venture philanthropists to lend to and overtake desperate partitions of the educational system. Budget cuts in education and other public services have been deemed the only option by legislators, particularly after economic downturns in 2002 and 2008. Corporate and upper class taxes, however, have seen considerable diminutions for decades, at the same time as budgets for wars and an ever-expansive prison system have steadily increased.90 Wisconsins Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is the largest of its kind supporting school vouchers and market-based education. The Mellon family fortune initiated and financed the Scaife Family Foundations, a group of three sub-foundations which donates to lobbying, publishing, and think tank powers. The H. Smith Richardson Foundation contributes to think tanks and universities.91 The heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune created the Walton Foundation, a group that has influenced the majority of pro-voucher ballot initiatives for the past two decades. AmWays family fortune funds the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation which gives to advocates of vouchers and organizations rich in media resources.92 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation are two of the more visible and resourceful megaphilanthropies. The Gates Foundation has spent over $3 billion on public education, donating to over 400 organizations.93 Perhaps strategically, the group has financially contributed to both liberals and conservatives, though the extensiveness of its ties and donations to pro-market think tanks, anti-union leaders, and supporters of the Common Core standardization movement can more easily categorize the entity alongside other venture philanthropies with corporate interests.94* Conservative Think Tanks A compendium of the 2000s more influential conservative organizations includes the Education Trust, the Education Sector, The Aspen Institute, and ED in 08. Falsifying or plainly omitting contradictory evidence is a keynote strategy of these groups.95 The Aspen Institutes Commission on NCLB, for example, ingratiated the public through nationwide debates in which testimonies were given by representatives from various pro-market institutions and foundations. Public school teachers were present at the meetings, but were not called on to testify their opinions and experiences with NCLB.96 The ED in 08 campaign, funded $60 million by the Broad Foundation and the Gates Foundation, aimed to push education to the platform of 2008 presidential candidates. The operation ran a website, radio, TV, and print ads to convince the public that our future as a nation is uncertain, and that education is the cure-all solution. Evidence supporting the outstanding claims was remiss, if available at all, during the campaign.97 American Legislative Exchange Council
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The Gates Foundation has invested more than $100 million in developing and disseminating Common Core standards.

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Perhaps the most undemocratic form of corporate politics is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Registered as a non-profit 501(c)(3) agency, ALEC is led by politicians, powerful corporations, and conservative foundations.98 It is the nations largest individual membership association of state legislators, and promotes legislation through each of its nine "task forces. Corporate representation on the education task force includes the Friedman Foundation, Goldwater Institute, Evergreen Education Group, Washington Policy Center, Sylvan Learning and K-12, Inc.99 Instead of maneuvering through the D.C. political arena, the agency targets state legislators. ALECs influential approach is significantly more direct than lobbying: the group unilaterally handwrites model legislation to be distributed to elected officials. Recipient legislators return to their respective home states to pass laws that, in some cases, are derived word for word from the ALEC legislation. Roughly 200 ALECinduced laws are passed annually. BusinessWeek wrote, Part of ALECs mission is to present industry-backed legislation as grass-roots work.100 At present, ALEC members account for nearly one-third of all incumbent legislators, including 85 members of Congress, totaling more than 2,000 legislative members from every state in the nation. Roughly 300 members are from corporations, foundations, and other areas of the private sector. The current chair of ALEC, David Frizzell, is a member of the Indiana House of Representatives.101 Headquartered in Washington, D.C., day-to-day operations are directed by a staff of approximately 30, supplemented by an advisory board of scholars to inform members of upcoming issues. ALEC receives 98 percent of its funding from corporations, special interests, and organizations. Expenses are kept private, instead of publicly available as defined by non-profit status.102 ALEC was founded by Henry Hyde, Lou Barnet, and Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of the right-wing policy institute Heritage Foundation. Originally the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators during the Nixon era, the group was later renamed to distance itself from a conservative stigma.103 Major funding comes from Exxon Mobil, the Scaife family, the Coors family, the Koch family, the Bradley family, and the Olin family.104 In the field of education policy, ALEC authors the Report Card on American Education.105 A principal focus is the weakening of the public education system, in tandem with the strengthening of alternatives to it. ALEC has pushed pro-voucher bills such as the Parental Choice Scholarship Act and the Education Enterprise Act.106 The group has made it lawful for public schools to contract with private virtual-education companies through the Virtual Public Schools Act (2011) which states, The purpose of this part is to provide an LEA with an alternative choice to offer additional educational resources in an effort to improve academic achievement.107 An example of the interconnectedness of education-corporate interests is a top executive of State Farm Insurance Company - an ALEC member who concurrently sits on the board of Achieve, Inc. Achieve, Inc. is both a leading proponent and developer of one of the Common Core national tests; State Farm paid tens of thousands of dollars to promote Common Core standards.108

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In ALECs 17th Report Card, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels opens the rhetoric with a foreword marinated in patently false statements and unfounded practices, including:
Prior to this session, 99 percent of Indiana's teachers were annually rated "Effective." If that rating were actually true, 99 percent--not just one-third--of our students would be passing national tests. From this point on, because of the diligence and fortitude of our reform-minded legislators, teachers will be promoted and retained based on performance rather than seniority. Teacher evaluations, which will be locally formulated, will rely on student improvement. Successful educators will be rewarded, while those whose students lag behind will be asked to find work elsewhere. Additionally, schools will now be graded on an A-F scale and they, too, will be held accountable for student advancement; and the state will not hesitate to intervene in those schools that fail repeatedly.109

Other influences include teacher certification and evaluation, collective bargaining, curriculum, funding, special education, student assessment, and introducing market factors into schools. Model legislation includes the Alternative Certification Act, Great Teachers and Leaders Act, National Teacher Certification Fairness Act, Public School Union Release Act, School Collective Bargaining Agreement Sunshine Act, Teacher Choice Compensation Act, Public School Financial Transparency Act, and the School Board Freedom to Contract Act.110 Revolutionizing education by supplanting unions and collective bargaining with corporate reforms are made explicit by ALEC in the Right to Work Act, the Public Employee Freedom Act, and the Voluntary Contribution Act. ALEC states:
Across the country for the past two decades, education reform efforts have popped up in legislatures at different times in different places. As a result, teachers unions have been playing something akin to whack-a-moleyou know the gamestriking down as many education reform efforts as possible. Many times, the unions successfully whack the mole, i.e., the reform legislation. Sometimes, however, they miss. If all the moles pop up at once, there is no way the person with the mallet can get them all. Introduce comprehensive reform packages.111

Privatization and universal eligibility for school vouchers are forwarded by an extensive list of acts.* Student testing is encouraged by Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind Act, Student Right to Learn Act, Education Accountability Act, Longitudinal Student Growth Act, One to One Reading Improvement Act, and Resolution on Non-verified Science Curriculum Funding. A reduction of local control is encouraged by Charter Schools Act, Innovation Schools and School Districts Act, Open Enrollment Act, Virtual Public Schools Act, and Next Generation Charter Schools Act.
*

Foster Child Scholarship Program Act, Great Schools Tax Credit, Military Family Scholarship Program Act, Parental Choice Scholarship Accountability Act, Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act, Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act, Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act, Parental Choice Scholarship Tax Credit Accountability Act, Education Enterprise Zone Act, Smart Start Scholarship Program, Special Needs Scholarship Program Act, Family Education Savings Account Act, Parental Rights Act, Resolution Supporting Private Scholarship Tax Credits, Autism Scholarship Program Act, and Family Education Tax Credit Program Act.

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The first large-scale voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (1990), was modeled after ALECs outline in its 1985 Education Source Book.112 113 More recently, ALEC published School Choice and State Constitutions in 2007 to promote privatization. Legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Lousiana, and Oklahoma adopted the recommendations through voucher programs, tax credits, and tax incentives.114 In 2007, ALEC helped to pass the Special Needs Scholarship Program Act which provides students with special needs with vouchers, in spite of decades of research suggesting such students perform better with additional support in public schools.115 Beyond omissions and gerrymandering data, the aforementioned groups, in conjunction with other like-minded organizations, political figures, and the media, have proffered sweeping statements that both panic and coerce the public. Five commonly oversimplified claims are unpacked in the next section.

IV. Corporate Propaganda Often in collusion with elite interests, forms of treetop, grassroots, white, black, and grey propaganda may forward particular educational agendas. Techniques include ad nauseam (ceaseless repetition), appeals to fear,* appeals to authority, cult of personality (creation of a heroic visage, as in the case of public figures Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan), disinformation (inadvertent or deliberate omissions), flag-waving (nationalism), dysphemisms (labeling), intentional vagueness, scapegoating, and doctrinal oversimplification. The significance of this section is not simply pointing out untruths purveyed to the lay public. Rather, it embodies a pattern of behavior and performancea system of parlaying wealth and power to engineer public opinion, deeply embedded in U.S. corporate history. The pattern is not conspiratorial, but it is systemic: as an example, a World Bank publication, Changing Public Opinion, asserts that public opinion is in part produced by Elite opinion leaders who express and publish opinions, have access to media outlets and technologies, and have high degrees of social influence or institutional power.116 V.O. Key, Professor of Government at Harvard University, points out that for the last century, increasing numbers of business corporations appointed public relations executives whose main functionwasto deal with wordsdesigned to influence the public without necessarily involving any basic change of attitude or action on the part of the company.117 The goal of propagandists is controlling the minds of the lay public through redefining truth.118 This strategy invokes the marketing of ideas instead of products, and the use of common advertising tactics - reputation through repetition, as a well-known example. In sum, the more corporate leaders are interested in public education (or any matter involving the public), the more political figures and media outlets are exploited to maintain power.
*

A three-page Global Business Summit summary report, for example, refrains broken two times, crisis four times, failing four times, and problem fifteen times. See The Role of Social Entrepreneurship in Transforming U.S.A. Public Education. (2008). The Centennial Global Business Summit, Harvard Business School.

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The emboldened examples below were selected for their broader ideological consistencies and subsequent propensity to be accepted as conventional wisdom. Direct quotes from public and private organizations, media outlets, material publications, and public leaders are used. In each example, as in most forms of propaganda, are distinct elements of truth. Presented is an identification of those elements within a brief followup discussion. U.S. Students Still Lag Globally in Math and Science, Tests Show.* During economic declines, the United States has historically shown a unique predisposition to welcome forms of self-criticism hanging in the air. For public education, this cultural anomaly has been particularly true in international test comparisons. For its purposes, this discussion will not explain at length that standardized tests are an imperfect instrument, or that international tests are misrepresentative of an accurate probability sample.119 Discerning one nations overall academic competence from another based solely on a standardized test is irrational on multiple levels, and that notion does not even have to account for other data-slanting factors such as selective participation by countries and students (prevalent particularly in the 1960s, in which the average scores of 75 percent of an American age-group were compared with average scores from the top percentages of other top nations) or differences in curriculum among nations.120 Because test scores are the currency of the day, assume that international tests in fact contain validity. PISA and TIMSS scores show the United States ranking in the middle of 35 participating nations, and have often been pointed to as sure signs of American decline and a lagging system. America is indeed slipping by some empirical measures, but the slip is largely socioeconomic. American schools with high concentrations of poverty (greater than 75 percent) typically fall below the international average. Controlling for poverty, however, American students outperform all nations in reading and science scores, and rank third internationally in math scores.121 The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that the United States in fact harbors 25 percent of all high-scoring students from 30 OECD nations and 28 partner countries in the PISA assessment.122 On the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the U.S. averaged 542, 42 points above the international average. Students from schools with less than 10 percent of students in poverty scored 589, and students from schools with 10 to 25 percent of students in poverty scored 567, six points above the highest scoring nation (Sweden).123 The United States has a higher proportion of impoverished children (22 percent) than the vast majority of the industrialized world, ranking 27th of 30 OECD countries in poverty per capita. Finland, which has become the apotheosis of a high scoring nation over the last decade, has a child poverty rate of 2 percent.124
*

See Motoko, Rich. (December 11, 2012). U.S. Students Still Lag Globally in Math and Science, Tests Show. The New York Times. Program for International Student Assessment Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study Assessments

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The National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) has become the touchstone for labeling American students inadequate, as only 29 percent are shown to achieve the NAEPs self-reported level of proficiency. Though foreign students do not take the NAEP, estimates on foreign performance indicate that 33 percent of Swedish students in reading would be proficient, only one nation (Singapore) would have a majority of its students proficient in science, and only a handful of countries would have a majority of students proficient in mathematics.125 Why assert the lagging of the U.S. public education system? The poorer American international performance appears to the public, the less opposition to reform and privatization will be met by policymakers. Continuous spending increases have not corresponded with equal improvement in American educational performance.* The American educational system is the largest domestic investment of pubic dollars, with federal expenditures totaling over $68 billion per year.126 Total K-12 spending, 93 percent of which is shared between state and local budgets, has skyrocketed from $12.5 billion in 1965 to $610.1 billion in 2008-09.127 128 Historically flat or decreasing standardized test scores have been called upon as evidence of wasteful spending and an ineffective system. By discounting significant figures and demographics of students taking tests, past and current national scores are often misinterpreted. Take the SAT Reasoning Test (formerly the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Scholastic Assessment Test) as an example. For decades, the exam was relegated to White middle and upper class students moving on to college: in 1941, 10,654 students, 98 percent of whom were White, took the test. In the stead of degree inflation, greater numbers and a wider range of students have tested; by 1995, over one million seniors took the SAT, 69 percent of whom were White. 23 percent reported family incomes of less than $30,000; 24 percent fewer students had attended private, college-preparatory high schools. These vicissitudes have affected the overall national averages, if only slightly. Verbal scores have stabilized for the past four decades. In 1967 the total average Verbal score was 543, dwindling into the 500s by 1977, and has since remained around 500 (+/10 points).129 The Math section total average was 516 in 1967, dropped into the 490s until 1985, and has steadily risen into the 510s since 1997. The Writing section national average, which has only been around since 2005, has dropped a meager 9 points.130 Education Week, perhaps in search of an eye-catching headline, ran an article in 1993 that showed a trend of top SAT scores declining, ostensibly a clerical input error. The real scores from 1982 all the way up to 2004 show students scoring at 700 and above on SAT more and more frequently. White students, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians all showed positive trends.131 Overall scores from national assessments have received similar criticisms. NAEP scores from three tested age groups9, 13, and 17show minor (+/- 10 points) changes
*

See Lips, D., Watkins, S., and Fleming, J. (September 8, 2008). Does Spending More on Education Improve Academic Achievement? Backgrounder: The Heritage Foundation.

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from the 1970s to the end of the 2000s.132* From 1978 to 2004, larger NAEP gains were made by Black and Hispanic subgroups than the White subgroup, but the overall trend declined.133 NAEP math scores are the quintessence of Simpsons Paradoxthe gaining (but comparatively lower) trends of expanding subgroups causing the aggregated trends to appear weaker. Similar to SAT trends, NAEP-tested students are increasingly from disadvantaged groupsforeign-born, minority, and impoverished. Correlative to escalating expenditures per pupil is a growing wealth disparity. To raiseor, at the very least, maintaintest score achievement levels, more money per student must be invested to counterbalance the lack of at-home resources. What students do not have (food, books, health care) schools have been asked to provide, resulting in higher and higher costs for LEAs.134 Social welfare in schools has contributed to an increase of per pupil expenditures from $3,400 in 1965 to $10,995 in 2011, $2,826 more than the average of OECD nations.135 Overall funding increases have been mostly due to a consistently expanding enrollment, new and expanding programs for disadvantaged groups of students (ESEA $35 billion, Title I, 21st Century Community Learning Centers for the gifted$1.2 billion, and the Individuals with Disabilities Act$14.5 billion), a stark increase of standardized testing ($1.7 billion), and an increase in teacher development training (Title II$3 billion). Alone, Title I grants for schools in which 35 percent or more students are low-income have climbed from less than $3 billion in 1980 to $14.5 billion in 2012.136 Without question, as Diane Ravitch, former U.S. Secretary of Education notes, there have been instances of wasteful spending: In retrospect, it is hard to think of a single program that the department funded during [the 1990s] that actually made a lasting contribution to the advancement of education.137 Between 2000 and 2008 alone, spending rose 34 percent. Paradoxically, business leaders have pushed to allocate millions of dollars to fund perseveratively ineffective reauthorizations of ESEA and a dramatic increase in standards-based reform.138 Testing industry revenues have mushroomed, and test spending has increased to $1.7 billion per year for states.139 Despite admonishments from the lay public, educators, and researchers that test scores are a political construct to declare regression, the road toward standardization has no end in sight.140 By no reliable measure have scores declined for the reasons (nor by the range) that the media reports. From another perspective, the overall scores plateau makes sense in light of one of the pro-market sectors most popularized objections to public education: an incrementalist tendency towards policy and practice, and this indictment generally holds true. Given the stubborn nature of public education, scores have little reason for spectacular fluctuationspositive or negative. To conceptually negate the scores discourse, or at the very least, ascribe its fundamental flaws, critics have long been voicing the limitations of empirical data in an
*

This finding correlates with status dropout rates for students aged 16-24. The U.S. Department of Education has estimated steady rates of dropout decline since 1990, but with a coefficient of variation (CV) of 30 percent or greater. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a Working Paper in 2007 that more intensely investigated dropout rates, concluding that the U.S. high school graduation rate peaked at around 80 percent in the late 1960s and then declined by 4-5 percentage points. See J. J. Heckman and P. A. LaFontaine, "The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels", NBER Working Paper No. 13670, December 2007.

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abstract field such as education. Innovation, work ethic, questioning and conventional wisdom, among a host of other qualities, are immeasurable by standardized tests. Other countries would agree. The worlds top achievement scorers have noted the American advantage in immeasurable qualities. Singapore, a perennial high flyer on standardized assessments, has few truly top-ranked scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, business executives, or academics. American kids test much worse, but seem to do better later in life and in the real world, observed Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapores Minister of Education.141 Chinas long-time love affair with a totalitarian system and strict virtuosos may become diminished in the future, as the nations leaders have prescribed the values from which American success is derived.142 To put the very real assertions of high costs in a different perspective, the total U.S. education spending is roughly 40 percent less than the federal defense budget.143 $2.9 billion is spent annually on FBI counter-terrorism measures alone,144 and the U.S. incurs $3.8 billion a day in national debt interest.145 Little are these facts discussed by those in favor of privatization, arguably because defense contractors and foreign lenders are already doing what many pro-market constituencies hope to do: socialize costs and privatize profits. This is a world in which a very high level of preparation in reading, writing, speaking, mathematics, science, literature, history, and the arts will be an indispensable foundation for everything that comes after for most members of the workforce. It is a world in which comfort with ideas and abstractions is the passport to a good job, in which creativity and innovation are the key to the good life, in which high levels of education a very dierent kind of education than most of us have had are going to be the only security there is.* Since the initial beeping of Sputnik in space, polemics have predicted a national decline, refraining failing public education as the principal reason. The Department of Educations 2006 report, A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education stated, In tomorrows world a nations wealth will derive from its capacity to educate, attract, and retain citizens who are able to work smarter and learn faster making educational achievement ever more important both for individuals and for society writ large.146 The World Economic Forum (WEF), an independent international organization based in Switzerland, helps to distill from where a nations wealth is derived. The Forum publishes an annual Global Competitiveness Report in which 144 nations (2013) are ranked according to 12 Pillars of Competitiveness, broken down from more than 100 economic indicators based on institutions, policies, and structural factors. Primary education and higher education constitute one-half of the Fourth and Fifth pillars, respectively.147 In terms of the WEFs international comparisons, education accounts for only one-twelfth of a nations ability to compete in a global market; public education accounts
*

Excerpted from National Center on Education and the Economy. (2006). Tough choices or tough times: The report of the new commission on the skills of the American workforce. National Center on Education and the Economy's Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.

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for one-twenty-fourth. Other determinantsinfrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health, career training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, and innovationare measurably more significant to a nations productivity. Even if educations impact is underrepresented in the Global Competitiveness Report, the U.S. is still the fourth most educated country in the world.148 Why the decline? The United States has historically fared well in WEF rankings, earning one of the top two slots from 1999 to 2005.149 Just before the 2008 economic downturn, the U.S. ranked first. In the 2013 index, however, it has fallen to seventh, two positions down from the previous year.150 Rankings, in and of themselves, tell nothing about real progression or regression. If the United States score improved only slightly less than all leading nations in a given year, there would be less cause for concern. However, the lower ranking is derived from a lowered overall score, and for reasons unrelated to education. The WEF writes of U.S. decline, A lack of macroeconomic stability continues to be the countrys greatest area of weakness (111th), and attributes distrust in politicians (54th) compounded by a profligate national deficit to the fall in assessment.151* Currently, the United States maintains the largest domestic economy. Concurrently, it has the highest national incarceration rate in the world, as well as the highest rate of legal executions in the democratic world. Research shows a widening inequality in wealth and a narrowing access of upward mobility from citizenry. The land of the free has been ranked 57th by the Press Freedom Index, and 19th by the Corruption Perceptions Index, largely due to the expanding influence of special interest cartels and lobbyists in the media, legislative processes, and government elections. Additionally, the United States has dropped for the fifth consecutive year in the Index of Economic Freedom with declines in monetary freedom, business freedom, labor freedom, and fiscal freedom. Restoring its losses will require significant policy reforms, a reduction of central government, a tax system overhaul, a reform of costly entitlement programs, and a streamlining of regulations.152 The Fraser Institutes Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report placed the United States 18th among 144 nations, largely due to government interference in individual rights, namely War on Terror offspringthe TSA and the contentious Patriot Act.153 As authors Tyack and Cuban note, It would take no great effort of the imagination to attribute U.S. economic ills to worldwide recession and to mismanagement on the part of business and government.154 Historian Lawrence A. Cremin adds: To contend that problems of international competitiveness can be solved by educational reform . . . is not merely utopian and millennialist, it is at best foolish, and at worst a crass effort to direct attention away from those truly responsible for doing something about competitiveness and to lay the burden instead on the schools.155 Education, for all its criticism in economic declines, weighs comparatively little; test score differences between nations weigh even less.156

Unmentioned is 35 years of WEF activism in forwarding neoliberalist globalization policies that have furthered privatization, deregulation, and degradation of U.S. policies. For further explanation see pp. 8-9 of Beder, Sharon. (2005). Corporate Propaganda and Global Capitalism Selling Free Enterprise? Global Politics in the Information Age, Manchester University Press.

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The strength of the American economy is inextricably linked to the strength of Americas education systemTo educate our way to a better economy, educators, public officials, and policymakers must ensure that every student in our country graduates from high school prepared for college and a successful career.* The future of any developed countrys workforce demands educated and highly skilled workers. A reasonable follow-up question more specific to the United States is, How skilled and how many? ED in 08 claimed that Two-thirds of new jobs being created in todays economy require higher education or advanced training. It continues, Occupations that pay enough to raise a familyjobs like electrical work, construction, upholstering, and plumbing, now demand the same math and reading skills it takes to be successful in college.157 The Urban Institutes research plainly debunks the claimonly 28.5 percent of new jobs from 2004-2014 require a high school or college degree; 7.1 percent require a graduate level education.158 When the numbers are disaggregated, it appears that ED in 08 is pointing to the comparative growth of high skills and the use of technology. The Bureau of Labor Statistics indeed projected high rates of job growth in high skill sectors, but the key word is rates.159 In terms of the actual number of jobs created, most will be low-paying, low skill occupations.160 In 2011, over two million college graduates were jobless.161 The National Bureau of Economic Research reported that stagnant status graduation rates accounts for a substantial portion of the recent slowdown in the growth of college educated workers in the U.S. workforce.162 For all the current emphasis on STEM subjects, reaffirmed by
Excerpted from Duncan, Arne. (April 2012). Investing in Americas Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Career and Technical Education. U.S. Department of Education: Office of Vocational and Adult Education. Similar examples include: The approach to work and education must fundamentally change. Recommendations include the following: (1) a new educational performance standard should be set for all students, to be met by age 16, with the standard established nationally and benchmarked to the highest in the world; (2) states should take the responsibility for assuring that virtually all students achieve the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM), with new local Employment and Training Boards creating and funding alternative learning environments for those who cannot attain the CIM in regular schools; (3) a comprehensive system of Technical and Professional Certificates and associate's degrees should be created for the majority of students and adult workers who do not pursue a baccalaureate degree; (4) all employers should be given incentives and assistance to invest in the further education and training of their workers and to pursue high productivity forms of work organization; and (5) a system of Employment and Training Boards should be established by federal and state governments, together with local leadership, to organize and oversee the new school-towork transition programs and training systems. Excerpted from the National Center on Education and the Economy. (2006). Tough choices or tough times: The report of the new commission on the skills of the American workforce. National Center on Education and the Economy's Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. This agenda starts with education. A highly-educated and skilled workforce will be the key not only to individual opportunity, but to the overall success of our economy as well. We cannot be satisfied until every child in America--and I mean every child--has the same chances for a good education that we want for our own children. See Obama, Barack. (2008). Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obamas Plan to Renew Americas Promise. Broadway, pp. 246-247; U.S. Department of Education. (April 2012). The National Bureau of Economic Research extrapolates this notion, asserting the growing but relative demand for high-skilled workers. See The Rise of the Service Economy. Francisco J. Buera and Joseph P. Kaboski. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 14822. March 2009.
*

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President Obamas statement that these are "the skills todays employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future,"163 the U.S. scientific market has a 1.8 million surplus of scientists and engineers.164 There is also no evidence that a highly skilled workforce would be highly compensated. Since 1980, overall average wage growth has remained flat, despite workers contribution to GDP soaring by 59 percent.165 Economist Lawrence Mishel explains, This modest wage growth was not the result of a broken economy: rather, modest wage growth is the result of the way the economy has been designed to work. Essentially, economic policy of the last three decades has not supported good jobs. The focus instead has been on policies that claimed to make consumers better off through lower prices.166 Wage growth among those with college and advanced degrees has increased a modest 25 percent since 1980 when compared to the 300 percent increase for the top one percentthe majority of whom are elite doctors, lawyers, executives, managers, supervisors, and financial professionals.167 Over the past 30 years, entry-level wages for male and female college graduates have increased by $1.80 and $2.63, respectively;168 in the past decade, entry-level wages have actually deteriorated. Economist Heidi Shierholz attributes the drop in earnings to a basic understanding of supply and demand in economics: the United States has a surplus of college graduates.169 These data suggest that we have in fact become an overeducated society due to the faddishness of a four-year college education. Our job is to give them the knowledge and skills to compete, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings asserted in 2004.170 The standardization movement calls for capable learners, skilled workers, and the kind of innovation that has propped up the U.S. economy for decades;171 the model, paradoxically, is a system designed and conceived for the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution.172 Clothed in the trappings of standardization, corporate reforms have undermined their own ethos and rhetoric by mandating a docile, low-skill, convergent, test-taking form of education. The nation must act urgently to close the achievement gap between poor and privileged children by changing the way public schools are financed, improving teacher quality, investing in early-childhood education and demanding greater accountability down to the local school board level.* Low test scores of impoverished and disadvantaged minority subgroups have been a focus of discussion, research and controversy for decades. The patterns of underachievement are patent: Average NAEP mathematics scores from 1990-2011 for 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-graders show White students scoring 25-34 points above Black students and 20-25 points above Hispanic students. Average NAEP reading scores from 19922011 for the same grades show White students scoring 19-39 points above Black students and 22-36 points above Hispanic students.173 The way some have come to view the gap in educational achievement is a single phenomenon unattached to broader criteria. Causation is often directed at the educational system, and the proposed solution is sometimes more of it. President Obama,
*

Excerpted from Layton, Lyndsey. (February 19, 2013). Education Panel: To Close Achievement Gap, Urgent State, Federal Action Needed. The Washington Post.

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for example, has cited higher quality preschools, summer learning programs, and afterschool opportunities as the gaps panaceas.174* Networks of successful KIPP schools that incorporate nonstop behavioral control, cultural sterilization, and psychological character interventions have been cited by philanthro-capitalists such as Bill Gates as further evidence that schools alone can get the job done.175 The Gates Foundation has additionally called on teachers, high expectations, and charter innovation as potential fixes.176 Raising standards and accountability for both students and teachers are another commonly proposed solution. Amy Wilkins, vice president of The Education Trust, asserted that Nothing is more important to high achievement than strong teachersThrough personal leadership, the use of federal authority and strategic funding, the president can help change [teaching]. You can't back away not even an inch from efforts to raise standards and improve accountability.177 To remediate the disparity, public figures have embalmed public education with higher expectations in the form of data-driven, high stakes testing, stringent teacher credentials, standardization, and higher concentrations of math and science. Little evidence of a narrowed disparity in 21 years of NAEP testing has been forthcoming, and the disparity decreases as a function of grade promotion. The Department of Education has assisted in the proliferation of falsehoods about the effect teachers and schools have on achievement, from profoundly misleading graphs178 to mislabeling thousands of schools as high flyers to support the claim that schools alone can mitigate high-poverty conditions and low-income student deficits.179 Indeed, education has become the de facto means out of substandard living and a springboard to the American Dream. Research since 1966180 has identified a variety of factors within a schools control that drive achievement. The most significant of these factors is teachers, leading Dr. Dan
*

Anecdotally, while high-performing nations such as Sweden and Finland do not begin formal schooling (reading and mathematics) for their youth until age 7, they do provide access to high-quality, affordable preschool starting at age three. See Ministry of Education and Science in Sweden, Education Act (1985:1100), found online at http://www.government.se/content/1/c6/02/15/38/1532b277.pdf#page=11 and Anneli Niikko, "Finnish Daycare: Caring, Education and Instruction", in Nordic Childhoods and Early Education: Philosophy, Research, Policy and Practice in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, Series: International Perspectives on Educational Policy, Research (Information Age Publishing Inc., 2006), 141. President Obamas 2008 Campaign Booklet, The Blueprint for Change: Barack Obamas Plan for America stated that Obama also will reduce the high school dropout rate and close the achievement gap by investing in proven intervention strategies in the middle grades & in summer learning & afterschool opportunities. NAEP narrowed test score disparities by race (1990-2011 math section): 15 points in White versus Black 4th grade math scores; 10 points in White versus Hispanic 4th grade math scores; 3 points in White versus Black 8th grade math scores; 6 points in White versus Hispanic 8th grade math scores; 0 points in White versus Black 12th grade math scores; -1 point in White versus Hispanic 12th grade math scores. NAEP narrowed test score disparities by race (1992-2011 reading section): 6 points in White versus Black 4th grade reading scores; 11 points in White versus Hispanic 4th grade reading scores; 6 points in White versus Black 8th grade reading scores; 5 points points in White versus Hispanic 8th grade reading scores, 5 points in White versus Black 12th grade reading scores*; 7 points in White versus Hispanic 12th grade reading scores*) *scores available in 2005 and 2009 only. For a follow-up discussion, see page 93 of Bracey, Gerald W. (2006). Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered. Portsmouth, NY: Heinamann.

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Goldhaber, Director of the Center for Education Data & Research, to conclude, it appears that the most important thing a school can do is to provide its students with good teachers.181 The often unpublicized findings, however, are the degree to which teachers and schools affect the total variation in student achievement: teacher quality accounts for 8.5 percent. Overall contributing school influences (including teacher quality) account for roughly 21 percent.182 According to Goldhaber, the remaining 79 percent are driven by non-school factors;183 accordingly, disparate test scores are indicative of social failuresdivorce, poverty, unemployment, resegregation, wars, and economic decline.184 Multiple studies have concluded that students socioeconomic status (SES) is a significant factor in student performance overall.185 Effectively narrowing the achievement gap between subgroups might necessitate an overhaul of wealth distribution,186 perhaps obviating why deep-pocketed reformers and the politicians whom they influence have historically hesitated to acknowledge socioeconomic issues in education. Structural inequalities have been ignored by presidential administrations from Reagan to Obama, instead insisting that low achievement will improve solely as a result of increased rigor for students, and raised expectations from teachers and parents.187 Given povertys direct correlation to test scores, other socioeconomic gaps that exist within the U.S. could, if narrowed, promote higher scores than educational reform: The incarceration gap (6:1 ratio of Blacks versus Whites)188 The homeowner gap (72.7% of Whites versus 48.2% of Blacks)189 The healthcare gap (71.4% of Whites versus 53.9% of Blacks)190 The household income gap ($48,399 White versus $31,140 and $35,467 for Blacks and Hispanics, respectively)191 The poverty gap (8.0% of Whites versus 24.7% and 22.0% of Blacks and Hispanics, respectively)192 The unemployment gap (5.7% of Whites versus 16.0% and 12.5% for Blacks and Hispanics, respectively)193 The homicide victim gap (5.4% of White males versus 39.7% of Black males)194 The instruction gap (the poorest students receive the poorest and most inexperienced teachers)195

SES influence has been found to trickle down to individual test questions - Dr. W. James Popham, one of the countrys leading authorities on educational testing, estimates the following number of standardized test items to be affected by SES: Reading: 9% Language Arts: 66% Math: 4% Science: 47% Social Studies: 45%196

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It may be worth noting that narrowing the achievement gap is only beneficial if all constituencies improve. A shrinking achievement gap could indicate an overall decrease in student performance if: Other subgroups scores improve while White students stagnate Other subgroups scores improve while White students scores decline Other subgroups stagnate while White students scores decline White students scores decline faster than other subgroups scores

Mandatory, standardized, high-stakes testing has dramatically increased as a means to close the gap. According to the Center for Public Education, the influx of such testing has spawned multiple negative effects - an increased teaching to the test, a decreased emphasis on a well-rounded curriculum, and teachers that are more mechanical than pedagogical. Testing legislation has also caused a sharp rise in unethical behavior by teachers and school districts, as well as reliability and validity inconsistencies in the tests themselves. The National Board on Educational Testing has stated that the largest test development companies have made an increasing number of errors each year since 1998.197 Largely because of high-stakes testing, and Despite a century of research that fails to support the efficacy of grade retention, studentsespecially the poor, minority, and inner city youthhave been withheld more and more frequently over the past 30 years. According to the National Association of School Psychologists, retained students are more likely to drop out of school, and an overwhelming number of retained students continue to perform poorly.198

V. Privatization Movements: Choice, Vouchers, and Charter Schools The federalization of public education has been condoned and supported by liberals and conservatives alike, and has fostered the growth of powerful national lobbies. By concentrating power, national business goals can center on a small host of policy makers; when decisions are fragmented into states and their local districts, business efforts prove far less efficient.199 Private tutoring companies, online education entrepreneurs, textbook and test publishers, and education management organizations have each been increasingly infused into the standardization and accountability movements. This section focuses on the larger trends of privatization and business influence: the belief in school choice, the school voucher programs, and charter schools. Educational Choice Educational choice may have made its initial appearance in Thomas Paines The Rights of Man,200 though the modern conception of school choice can be attributed to a 1955 voucher proposal by libertarian economist Milton Friedman condemning the government monopoly over public education.201 He argued that school alternatives would provide a vibrant and diverse market of schooling options, and that vouchers

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are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a make a transition from a government to a free-market system.202 Friedmans solution was parental choice through unregulated state-funded vouchers, and the creation of a market in education.203 Vouchers Though it took more than three decades to instantiate since Friedmans original proposal, voucher experimentation eventually became a reality in Milwaukee (1990), Washington D.C. (1993-2010), Cleveland (1995), New York City (1997), Florida (1999), and New Orleans (2008). In each case, measurable successes in raising student performance and closing the achievement gap have been mediocre, and controversy has encircled each institution pervasively. But to the advocates of privatization, the polarized debate has been less about measurable improvement, and more about a deep-seated faith in the long-term advantages of a market delivering social services.204* Charter Schools Among the most influential changes of the privatization movement, the charter school system currently educates more than two million students in nearly 6,000 schools.205 A. Description Charter schools are contracted by states or school districts to an independent school operator; however, unlike private or parochial schools, they do not charge tuition, and are publicly funded through state and local governments, school districts, and private charitable donations. Although each states law differs, charters generally receive a predetermined amount of public funds per capita.206 The charter proposal grants exemption from selected state or local rules and regulations, and may include a mutually-accepted mission, the scope of the curriculum and any special area of focus, the students to be recruited for enrollment, and indicators of academic success. Once sponsorship is granted, charter schools are governed by a group or an organization under a legislative contract within the state or jurisdiction. Charter schools set their own budget, hire their own teachers, and create their own curricula. Students are eligible for enrollment if they live within the local districts perimeter, and are accepted through an application process. If applications exceed spots available, a lottery is held.207 In return for funding and autonomy, the charter school must theoretically meet the accountability standards articulated in its charter. A schools charter is reviewed periodically (typically every 3 to 5 years) and can be revoked if guidelines on curriculum
*

An Urban Institute study found no evidence supporting the privatization of public services, and privatization of public services was found to be more politically than economically driven in a Public Administration Review. See: Privatization of Public Social Services: A Background Paper. Demetra Smith Nightingale and Nancy M. Pindus. Urban Institute, 2007; The Mythology of Privatization in Contracting for Social Services. David M. Van Slyke. Public Administration Review. May/June 2003, 63(3).

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and management are not followed or if the standards are not met. In 200910, charter schools operated in 40 states and the District of Columbia. In the following states, a charter school law has not been passed: Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.208 In 200910, 55 percent of charter schools were located in cities, 21 percent were in suburban areas, eight percent were in towns, and 16 percent were in rural areas. Constituencies seeking to create a charter school are usually grassroots nonprofits and parents, teachers and community leaders, entrepreneurs, or existing public of private schools converting to charter status. In some cases, community residents may apply for a charter after the state authority has closed the local public school and consolidated the district.209 B. History and Numbers Conceptually, the origins of charter schools began in the 1970s;210 the first charter school in the United States opened in 1992 in Minnesota, following an unprecedented charter school state legislation. The original law capped the total number of charter schools allowed in the state at eight.211 In 1994, the federal Charter Schools Program was borne from Title X of ESEA, ostensibly supporting the planning, development, and implementation of charter schools nationwide. The budget for the program increased from $6 million in 1995 to $310 million in 2010, much of which has been granted to State Education Agencies (SEAs). By 1999-2000, approximately 1,300 schools were in operation, with an enrollment of approximately 0.3 million. By 2004, the number increased to 2,700, and 3,200 by 2004-2005. By 2008-2009, 4,568 charters were in existence, with an approximate enrollment of 1.6 million students. The stark increase has been cattleprodded by several government initiatives to increase funding.212 The rapid expansion of charter schools has been largely in part a result of the accountability and privatization movements; No Child Left Behind, for example, provided incentives for charter school creation which were extended by the Obama administration.213 Pro-charter entities submit that charters provide a necessary alternative to public education, and have been used by administrators to restructure schools failing to meet AYP. The benefits of charters and privatization for society at large are increasingly promoted by both democratic and republican platforms, appealing to ideologies on the right (school choice, market forces, competition, efficiency through out-sourcing) and the left (curriculum reform, community control and access to quality education for the lower classes).214 C. Charter Successes As early as 2003, studies have been conducted to test the viability of charter schools. There are examples of wonderful private and charter schools with laudable goals, value systems, and levels of achievement. These schools have the potential to invoke precisely what a market allows: innovation through deregulation. In theory, autonomous, accountable private education is free from the constraints of overly stringent certification requirements, nonsensical federal and state policies, disruptive politics,

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union agreements, and top-heavy inefficiencies.215 They have more room for new ideas and innovations, and each school can serve a different purpose for a different population, catering to the communitys individualized needs and conditions, in lieu of a one size fits all curriculum that characterizes public education.216 In other words, benefits of private schools are available and have been realized in some cases, provided that the fundamental goals of these schools are sufficiently guarded and ideologically pure. Pro-market advocates argue that existing institutions forestall radical, necessary improvements to an archaic traditional system that could bring large performance gains and other extraordinary results.217 Indeed, there are examples of charter success. Bostons MATCHMedia and Technology Charter Highfor example, earned a spot on an ABC News Special highlighting its success as the highest performing open admission high school in Massachusetts.218 Met Schools, though public, are examples of positive implementation of independent ideas by educators.219 Researchers have uncovered other isolated triumphs by charter schools using reliable methodologies. In 2009, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) conducted a sampling of charter schools in sixteen states. They found charters in five states Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, and Missouri producing significant, positive effects on reading and math assessments for their students.220 A 2010 CREDO follow-up study in New York City found that 51 percent of charters produced better math results, and 29 percent of charters produced better reading results.221 But at-large inconsistency mars the contemporary charter climate. The same CREDO national study found that only 17 percent of charter schools outperformed traditional public schools in math and reading. 46 percent were on par with public schools, and 37 percent were outperformed by public schools.222 D. Charter Criticisms For-Profit Companies & Education Management Organizations (EMOs) Concerns involving the privatization of education are perhaps not a disbelief in the potential benefits of a market system, but a mistrust of for-profit involvement. 223 The Internal Revenue Service has helped to reveal a by-product of privatizationthe domination of nonprofit school boards by for-profit Education Management Organizations (EMOs). In an observable contradiction of values in the provision of education, the majority of charter schools in the U.S. are nonprofit organizations, while the majority of charter schools are managed by for-profit companies.224 225 By nature, forprofit organizations concern themselves with returns for investors and the bottom line. It is still unclear how students can compete with inherent conflicts of interests.226 EMOs are sought when the parties which have established a charter school are inexperienced in school management. Outsourced EMOs manage facilities, oversee dayto-day operations, and hire and dismiss teachers. EMOs additionally proffer predetermined curricula, and may negotiate for resources and supplies on behalf of the school to save the school time and money.227

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The goal of an EMO, by its for-profit temperament, is efficiency. Unregulated, efficiency may entail a host of negative side effects: a centralization of decision-making, a minimization of nonprofit board member and community involvement, controlling the charter application process, resistance to curricula alterations, and a capitalization on expansion opportunities to increase scale and market share. This totalitarian exercise of control produces a for-profit alter ego, a school much unlike the original intents and ideologies of its creators. Further, such internal corruption and conflicts of interests do not meet the financial stewardship required by charters use of public monies.228 States categorize for-profit law into two legal regimes: restrictive and permissive, the latter permitting for-profit charters. In most cases and states, it is unlawful for for-profit companies to establish a charter, though loopholes are frequently exploited. The fear among skepticsevinced consistentlyis the proliferation of a publicly-funded for-profit industry.229 The for-profit examples are emblematic of the problems that have emerged throughout the charter systems history. EMOs will continue to serve the charter school market, notwithstanding a charge led by opponents who have been able to impose high political and legal costs on these organizations. As a result of shrinking profits and bad press from political figures and the media, management companies have become more selective about client acquisition.230 Charter Efficacy & Double Standards Two prevalent criticisms of charter schools hold that 1) they are less effective than public schools and 2) they are held to more lenient standards than public schools - or no standards at all. As charters moved to the vanguard of the pro-market agenda, two studies one by the American Federation of Teachers, and one by the U.S. Department of Education were released in 2003 and 2004, respectfully.231 In both studies, 20 out of 22 reading and math comparisons favored public schools. Regardless of underperformance, however, the 2004 DOE study said, Charter schools rarely face sanctions (revocation or nonrenewal). If charter schools receive sanctions at all, they are rarely imposed due to student performance.232 Since the release of its 2004 report, the DOE has sharply decreased the amount of information it collects concerning charter schools.233 Charter schools are exempted by government regulation e.g., whom to hire, what to teach, and where to teach it and well-intentioned administrators use the autonomy to focus more on real or novel education for students. That charter schools typically underperform compared to public schools on standardized tests could mean that the curriculum is driven by a different value system, one that may not include the inundation of math and reading that has come to characterize public education. It could mean that students are able to pursue their own varied interests, learn at their own pace, and that creating lifelong learners is considered more productive for society at large than short-term cramming for standardized tests.234 In some cases this hopeful reality may ring true, though plenty of alternative reasons for underperformance are identified in this section. The negative consensus held by many might be anecdotal if it were not for the effusive pro-market push for accountability and measurability. The same individuals, in many cases, that rely on

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numbers to define successful education are churning out schools that fail by their own one-sided definition. This situation has created an incendiary double standard. The knife is twisted further when public educators, after seeing their schools decimated for failing to achieve arbitrary results, realize that charter schools with similar scores remain operational in perpetuity without federal impingement.235 In theory, charters are regulated by exemplified student achievement, allowing SEAs to revoke the schools charter. Seldom does revocation occur, and though the statutes supporting charter schools make accountability a centerpiece, closure due to academic underperformance is optional for states only 30 of the 41 jurisdictions include low levels of achievement as a reason for revocation.236 Other charter low-performers find loopholes in the absence of due process rights, states varying appeals processes, and statutes vague language that grants authorizers a wide discretion.237 A 2009 Center for Education Reform study revealed that out of the 5,600 nationwide charters, only two percent have been eliminated for poor academic performance.238 Charter schools are approved by central bodies of quality authorizers that theoretically regulate and maintain high standards to ensure appropriate uses of public money. In theory, authorizers extensively review a prospective schools proposal, its financial viability, student achievement results, and multiple rounds of paper applications. These shadowy figures are responsible for promoting the conditions that create effective charter schools. Typically, public and media attention is paid to summative outcomes: standardized scores, and whether those scores are positive or negative. Largely ignored are the impetuses that created the scores in the first place. The anticipated result is ever-increasing levels of federal funding for potentially ineffective schools, creating no distinction between practices which encourage efficacy and which practices are undesirable. The implication is an unprincipled movement in which an agenda is pursued ahead of students well-being. The charter system in the United States is not alone in its movement: more than two-thirds of the OECD nations have increased school choice for reasons similar to those posited by the pro-market sector in the United States. According to the OECD, these nations have declined in academic results and have seen an increase in school segregation.239 Segregation Causal explanations for the White flight of the mid-20th century are grounded in a deep field of historical work on housing, and may be worth reading to understand contemporary segregationist policy. Conventional wisdom holds that de facto segregation was, at the time, encouraged by choice and the free housing market; suburbia was more desirable than metropolitan life, and so White families capitalized on the opportunity. Ignored are the ingredients that made the opportunity desirable: federal tax and lending policies, transportation policies, and practices in the real estate industry.240 Today, school choice, which has become a pseudonym for chartering, reflects a willful ignorance of broader patterns of segregation. Desegregation was at its zenith in the 1980s, when 57 percent of Black southerners attended mostly-Black schools. By 2005, the percentage had been resurrected to 72 percent.241

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Charter schools have been promoted by their ability to undermine the corrosiveness of segregation, but most charter school students are as jurisdictionally confined as public school students. Mobility is negated by policy: students from poorer or city districts are barricaded from wealthier or suburban districts by the districts in which they live.242 Compounding matters, most of suburbia has politicked against charter schools within its districts to maintain the level of resources that publicly-funded chartering threatens to diminish.243 The result is higher rates of segregation in charter schools than in nearby public schools, including disproportionately low numbers of English langue learners and students with special needs. National Education Policy Center affirms that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. 43 percent of Black charter school students attend schools that are 99 percent minority; 15 percent of Black students in traditional public schools attend such highly segregated schools.244 According to the U.S. Department of Education, demographic enrollment changed little over a 10-year period of expanded chartering. The percentages of students in public charter schools who were White or Black decreased between 19992000 and 200910 (42 vs. 37, 34 vs. 30, respectively). The percentages who were Hispanic increased between 19992000 and 200910 (20 vs. 26). One in three charter schools serve a high-poverty population; one in five serves a low-poverty population. The combined percentages substantiate the extremes of charter schools: more than half (52 percent) of all charter schools in the U.S. serve a profoundly segregated population. Some of the nations most segregated schools are charter schools, in which students are often isolated by race, income, language and special education status.245 Simultaneously over the past decade, politicians have exerted nearly impossible standards for public schools to reach particularly those in urban areas as the public waited to find out if the schools could measure up by the designated timeframe. After failing by jerry-rigged federal criteria, states may categorize public schools as restructuring, a label synonymous with closure. The option that has long been presented as the solution school choice - becomes the only option for students from failing schools and districts. Charter schools are subsequently handed sufficient enrollment from nearby restructured public schools.246* Court Involvement Decisional law and the court system have been ineffective at confining and policing the interaction between nonprofit organizations and EMOs, arguably because of challenges facing plaintiffs to bring suits and lack of institutional resources for monitoring and litigation by state and local government, charter-conferring organizations, or attorneys general. All but a few state legislatures have been unable to amend legislation to safeguard nonprofit independence.247 Under federal law, for-profit interaction with charter schools notionally threatens the nonprofit tax exempt status, but the IRS Manual and previous rulings provide
*

For suggestions on improving segregationist policies, see Frankenberg, E., Siegel-Hawley, G., Wang, J. (2011) Choice without equity: Charter school segregation. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 19 (1).

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insufficient guidance to nonprofits seeking EMOs.* Without clear guidelines, the IRS and Department of Treasury have left the venal relationships between charter schools and EMOs unaddressed.248 Even in restrictive states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, EMOs have flourished. Ohio has been successful in amending its legislation to minimize the number of for-profit managers or operators on its charter schools boards; however, the statute does not address the terms with which boards contract EMOs, nor does it define the roles of EMOs to prevent undesirable amounts of control and power. Savvy management companies with explicit strategies to limit client involvement may circumnavigate murky or permissive statutes.249 Political Agendas Government objectives have been made transparent, in spite of contradicting research. The Department of Education hid a study250 that found negative results from charter schools.251 The aggrandizement of charter school legislation has been particularly divisive in the context of Race to the Top initiatives. The individuals who helped create and approve the legislation clearly opined their pro-charter sentiments by granting over $300 million to states lifting caps on the number of charter schools permitted. The land is fertile for the privatization proponents, as the financial crisis has resulted in a paucity of resources for many states and LEAs. States are co-opted by millions in federal aid by raising caps on charter school numbers. New York, for example, dramatically increased its cordon from 200 to 460 to reapply for Race to the Top funding.252 Teachers The low quality of many charter schools stems in part from their teachers ironically a pro-markets favored critique of public education when compared to the experience and education of public school teachers. In Texas, for example, 11 percent of charter faculty lack a college degree, and 73 percent had five years of experience or less. Public schools numbers were 1 percent and 36 percent, respectively.253 Teachers are not tenured in these schoolsif a given teacher refuses to fully buy into the schools approach or ethos, he or she is easily replaced by someone willing to comply.254 The missives of corporate reformers are also vested in the stultification of unionized collective bargaining. Unionization is unavailable to charter schools, permitting administrations to unilaterally dictate pay, working conditions, and bargaining rights without the pestering of union representation or strikes. Profit potential is maximized by skimming off teacher pay, extending the teacher day, tightening teacher control through time, subject matter, and pedagogical constraints, all in the name of efficiency.255 Concurrently, privatization allows charters to hire teachers from any walk

For a more detailed explanation on IRS involvement, see Contracts, Control and Charter Schools: The Success of Charter Schools Depends on Stronger Nonprofit Board Oversight to Preserve Independence and Prevent Domination by For-Profit Management Companies. Julia L. Davis. B.Y.U. Education and Law Journal. 2011.

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of life or field, many of whom are inexperienced in education and do not progress through a teacher prep program.256 The forthcoming question becomes, Does the government believe in the potential of charter schools, or is legislation being impelled upon education by market-, economy-, and profit-driven regents of the privatization movement? The answer may be true in both cases.

Conclusion Many of the corporate reforms have been surprising, seemingly impossible to successfully implement, unsupported by research, and largely unhelpfulparticularly to marginalized factions of students. To characterize current legislature as uninformed or obdurate byproducts of doctrinal ideologies is together a truism as well as an oversimplification. Direct and indirect beneficiaries of privatization policies are often a consortium of private corporations and investors. Impressionable policymakers may not, in all cases, be privy to the outcomes of their legislation, but the corporate leaders influencing policy are clairvoyant. Such decisions are calculated, grounded in history, and well-masked to the lay public. The corporate leaders have achieved their successes by applying a wealth of resources, infiltrating the media, establishing and supporting like-minded organizations, public figures, and politicians. Linchpins of their efforts are what George Orwell classified as a political debasement of language: humanitarian dictums promoting accountability and equality of resources, opportunities, and instruction for students, national economic improvement, remediation of urban and high-poverty schools, and a better future for America and American students.257 In the wake of apocalyptic reports such as A Nation258 (1983), Americas Choice: High Skills or Low Wages!259 (1990) and Tough Choices or Tough Times260 (2006), businessmen have capitalized on public unrest, and used it as an opportunity to present themselves as solutions to problems only they have identified. The United States has seen an unprecedented resolve by business and legislative communities to wrest control from local districts and states.261 As the criticism of public education and teachers has gained political appeal, corporate reformers have developed a vast network of political allies supporting the privatization of public education. Corporate influence has invoked consistent rhetoric to ease the public by ceaseless repetition. Demagogic watchwords that promote fear are intended to rally the public behind a fabricated cause, much like propaganda for recent U.S. wars.262 An effective counterinsurgency by the three directly affected groups of stakeholdersparents, students, and teachersremains unachieved for myriad reasons. Teachers are often socialized in teacher prep programs to accept their fate as obedient, disempowered standardized testing proctors. Once employed, many teachers are reticent to challenge the institution which they serve for fear of dismissal for insubordination.263

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Those that remain employed tend to dismiss themselves, evinced by the 40-50 percent attrition rates of public school teachers. The most commonly cited reason for teacher attrition is a rejection of standardization and deprofessionalization of the field.264 Parents are understandably ignorant to the validity of standardized tests and many reforms. Further, suburban teachers are predominantly White, middle class-females, while urban public school parents are primarily of color. Those most afflicted the lower classes are less likely than affluent citizens to assert themselves or challenge authority.265 Corporate involvement in education is emblematic of a broader pattern of freemarket dominance that increasingly permeates societal and economic arenas, both domestically and abroad. The trend is ideologically-driven, unsupported by the lay public, and, in a more historical context, perhaps a return to the spirit of the Industrial age: Gain wealth, forgetting all but self.266

Endnotes
Erickson, Ansley. (Fall 2011). The Rhetoric of Choice. Dissent Magazine. Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 3 Gardner, H. (1995). How Are Kids Smart: Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom Administrators' Version. 4 Grady, Dylan P. (2011). Charter School Revocation: A Method for Efficiency, Accountability, and Success. Valpraiso University Law School; Vinovskis, Maris A. (January 1987). Family and Schooling in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century America. Journal of Family History, Vol. 12 Issue 1-3, pp 19-37. 5 Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 6 Chomsky, Noam. Education for What and for Whom? 7 Rudolph, Frederick. (1991) The American College and University: A History, pp 3-22; Harvard University (1902). Report of the president of Harvard College and reports of departments. pp. 2. 8 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (20120). Digest of Education Statistics, 2011 (NCES 2012-001). Chapter 3; Bureau of Labor Statistics; FHFA; Thomson Reuters. 9 Broder, David S. (December 7, 2008). College affordability about future. Burlington Free Press. 10 Field, Kelly. (August 15, 2010). Nelnet to Pay $55 Million to Resolve Whistle Blower Lawsuit. The Chronicle of Higher Education; Schemo, Diana Jean (June 10, 2007). Private Loans Deepen a Crisis in Student Debt. The New York Times. 11 http://www.newyorkfed.org/studentloandebt/index.html 12 Saltman, Kenneth J. (December 2011) The Failure of Corporate School Reform: Toward a New Common School Movement. 13 Maskus, Keith E. and Reichman, Jerome H. (2004). The Globalization of Private Knowledge Goods and the Privatization of Global Public Goods. Journal of International Economic Law 7(2). 14 Kevin K. Kumashiro. (2012). When Billionaires Become Education Experts. 15 Kovacs, Philip E. and Christie, H.K. (December 2008). The Gates Foundation and the Future of U.S. Public Education: A Call for Scholars to Counter Misinformation Campaigns. Journal for Critical Education Studies, 6(2). 16 Walter Licht. (1995). Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century.
2 1

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Emery, Kathy, and Ohanian, Susan. (2004). Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? New York: Heinemann; Robert L. Church. (1976). Education in the United States: An Interpretive History. pp 288-313; Edward Krug. (1964). The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920. 18 Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 19 Ibid. 20 Chomsky, Noam. (2002). Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. The New Press. 21 Jeff Lingwall. (2009). Compulsory Schooling, the Family, and the Foreign Element in the United States, 1880-1900. 22 Herbsts, Jurgen. (1996). The Once and Future School: Three Hundred and Fifty Years of American Secondary Education. Routledge. 23 Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 24 Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz. (2008). The Race between Education and Technology. 25 Robert L. Church. (1976). Education in the United States: An Interpretive History. pp 288-313; Edward Krug. (1964). The Shaping of the American High School, 1880-1920. 26 Au, Wayne. Teaching Under the New Taylorism: High-stakes Testing and the Standardization st of the 21 Century Curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Drury, Horace Bookwalter. (1915). Scientific Management: A History and Criticism, New York, NY: Columbia University. 30 Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 31 Au, Wayne. Teaching Under the New Taylorism: High-stakes Testing and the Standardization st of the 21 Century Curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies. 32 Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Kumashiro, Kevin K. (2012). When Billionaires Become Education Experts. 36 J. Buera, Francisco and Kaboski, Joseph P. (March 2009). The Rise of the Service Economy. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 14822. 37 Mittal, Anuradha and Gustin, Felicia. (2006). Turning the Tide: Challenging the Right on Campus. Oakland, CA: The Oakland Institute and the Institute for Democratic Education and Culture; David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); David B. Tyack. (1974). The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 38 Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth A. (1995). Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960. University of Illinois Press. 39 Ibid. 40 Shipps, Dorothy. (2011). The Politics of Education Reform: Idea Champions and Policy Windows. 41 Harris, Douglas N. and Witte, John F. (2011). The Market for Schooling. 42 th Bracey, Gerald W. (2007). The 17 Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education: The First Time Everything Changed. Phi Delta Kappan; Chomsky, Noam. Education for What and for Whom? 2012. 43 We Are Less Educated than 50 Years Ago, U.S. News & World Report, 30 November 1956, pp. 68-82. 44 What Went Wrong with U.S. Schools, U.S. News & World Report, 24 January 1958, pp. 6877. 45 th Bracey, Gerald W. (2007). The 17 Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education: The First Time Everything Changed. Phi Delta Kappan. 46 Ibid.

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Grady, Dylan P. (2011). Charter School Revocation: A Method for Efficiency, Accountability, and Success. Valpraiso University Law School. 78 Kohn, Alfie. (2000). The Case Against Standardized Testing. Heinemann; Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 79 Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program: Final Report. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, Report no. 2004-08, 2004. 80 Sunderman, Gail L. (Summer 2009). The Federal Role in Education: From the Reagan to the Obama Administration. Annenberg Institute for School Reform. 81 Shipps, Dorothy (2011). The Politics of Education Reform: Idea Champions and Policy Windows. 82 Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry. (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 83 Saltman, Kenneth J. (December 2011) The Failure of Corporate School Reform: Toward a New Common School Movement. 84 Powell, Jr., Lewis F. (1971). Attack of American Free Enterprise System. 85 Kumashiro, Kevin K. (2012). When Billionaires Become Education Experts. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid; Public Education, Privatization and Deprofessionalization. Diane Ravitch. Speech delivered January 20, 2012. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Kumashiro, Kevin K. (2012). When Billionaires Become Education Experts. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Kovacs, Philip E. and Christie, H.K. (December 2008). The Gates Foundation and the Future of U.S. Public Education: A Call for Scholars to Counter Misinformation Campaigns. Journal for Critical Education Studies, 6(2). 94 Kumashiro, Kevin K. (2012). When Billionaires Become Education Experts; Pioneer Institute (see Fischer article). 95 Kumashiro, Kevin K. (2012). When Billionaires Become Education Experts. 96 Kovacs, Philip E. and Christie, H.K. (December 2008). The Gates Foundation and the Future of U.S. Public Education: A Call for Scholars to Counter Misinformation Campaigns. Journal for Critical Education Studies, 6(2).. 97 Bracey, Gerald W. (2007). The 17th Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education: The First Time Everything Changed. Phi Delta Kappan. 98 McIntire, Mike. (April 21, 2012). Conservative Nonprofit Acts as a Stealth Business Lobbyist. The New York Times. 99 A Smart ALEC Threatens Public Education. Julie Underwood and Julie F. Mead. Phi Delta Kappan. March 2012, 93(6):51-55.
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Davis, Julia L. (2011). Contracts, Control and Charter Schools: The Success of Charter Schools Depends on Stronger Nonprofit Board Oversight to Preserve Independence and Prevent Domination by For-Profit Management Companies. B.Y.U. Education and Law Journal. 225 Kumashiro, Kevin K. (2012). When Billionaires Become Education Experts. 226 Ibid. 227 Davis, Julia L. (2011). Contracts, Control and Charter Schools: The Success of Charter Schools Depends on Stronger Nonprofit Board Oversight to Preserve Independence and Prevent Domination by For-Profit Management Companies. B.Y.U. Education and Law Journal. 228 Ibid. 229 Ibid. 230 Ibid. 231 Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program: Final Report (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, Report no. 2004-08, 2004); Nelson, F. Hoard, Rosenberg, Bella, and Van Meter, Nancy. (August 2004). Charter School Achievement on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress. American Federation of Teachers. 232 Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program: Final Report (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, Report no. 2004-08, 2004). 233 th Bracey, Gerald W. (2005). The 15 Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. Phi Delta Kappan. 234 Grady, Dylan P. (2011). Charter School Revocation: A Method for Efficiency, Accountability, and Success. Valpraiso University Law School. 235 Ibid. 236 U.S. Department of Education. (2010). Fostering Innovation and Excellence. 237 Grady, Dylan P. (2011). Charter School Revocation: A Method for Efficiency, Accountability, and Success. Valpraiso University Law School. 238 The 2009 Accountability Report. (2009). Center for Education Reform. . 239 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2012). Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools. OECD Publishing; Sahlberg. Pasi. (2012). Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? 240 Erickson, Ansley. (Fall 2011). The Rhetoric of Choice. Dissent Magazine. 241 Ibid. 242 Ibid. 243 Ibid. 244 Mead, J.F. and Green, P.C. (2012). Chartering Equity: Using Charter School Legislation and Policy to Advance Equal Educational Opportunity. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center; Mead, J.F. and Green, P.C. (2012). Model Policy Language for Charter School Equity. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. 245 Mead, J.F. and Green, P.C. (2012). Chartering Equity: Using Charter School Legislation and Policy to Advance Equal Educational Opportunity. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. 246 Emery, Kathy, and Ohanian, Susan. (2004). Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? Heinemann, 247 Davis, Julia L. (2011). Contracts, Control and Charter Schools: The Success of Charter Schools Depends on Stronger Nonprofit Board Oversight to Preserve Independence and Prevent Domination by For-Profit Management Companies. B.Y.U. Education and Law Journal. 248 Ibid. 249 Ibid. 250 Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program: Final Report (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, Report no. 2004-08, 2004). 251 th Bracey, Gerald W. (2005). The 15 Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. Phi Delta Kappan. 252 Davis, Julia L. (2011). Contracts, Control and Charter Schools: The Success of Charter Schools Depends on Stronger Nonprofit Board Oversight to Preserve Independence and Prevent Domination by For-Profit Management Companies. B.Y.U. Education and Law Journal.

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