Lies about American education.
ABC's John Stossel of 20/20 is a big lying fool. His "expose" about America's failing schools is nothing but a thinly-veiled whine for privatization of public schools. Why would he want that? Because his Republican and corporate masters have told him so.
Stossel repeats the same faulty refrain: our schools are failing our kids because they don't have "choice" and they perform worse than foreign kids. And that's all caused by, as you can guess, teachers' unions and tenure.
Stossel conveniently never mentions that American kids score lower than foreign kids because American schools test EVERY student the same, including special education kids. So it's not a surprise that the average is lower (America's best performs as well as anyone else). Nor does Stossel mention that charter schools test higher because they can CHERRY PICK THEIR STUDENTS. Hey if I could pick out the very brightest kids, I could teach them out of my garage and outperform the leftovers too.
Idiots like Stossel believe that a corporate-run school would somehow do better. Y'know, the same way corporate-run prisons were supposed to outperform state prisons. Where'd that end up? Inmates took over the prison and they had to be shut down. (All caused by typical corporate spending cuts.) Say what you will, but public schools still put education first. No corporation will ever put education ahead of profits. They simply are incapable of putting anything ahead of profits. They don't know how. They're not designed for it.
And notice that Stossel never mentions the role of parents or the students. They can't possibly have anything to do with it. (Hint: the number one reason a student underperforms? They don't try very hard.)
No, all the fault lies with the ones who just happen to have a union. And we all know how much rightwingers hate it when employees stand up for themselves.
posted by Daniel Preece @ 11:29 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Stossel is neither "anti-education" nor "pro-education reform." Stossel is PRO-PRIVATIZATION and he uses shortcomings in the public education system as justifications.
(Stossel even argues the FAA should be privatized.)
NONE of the problems in education can be solved by privatization. Privatization won't make teachers any better, just lower paid with less training. Privatization won't make parents more demanding of the schools or involved in students' performance. And privatization won't make students suddenly try any harder.
Where did this fantasy come from? It's a simple matter of economics (and logic) that privatization will cost more or provide less for the current money spent because a chunk of it MUST go towards profits. This has all already been proven with similar experiments regarding prisons, and the partial privatization of school services such as cafeterias and transportation. In each case, the service almost immediately plummeted and the costs skyrocketed.
So, under Stossel's plan, we would be certain to pay more and get less.
And how would THAT raise test scores?
Chris, What would you expect from someone who is living off the dole?
Well, a couple of trolls! I feel privileged for your company.
Sadly, it took just one response from me for you to abandon your argument altogether and drag out the ad hominem attacks. If you're going to give up so easily, why even bother?
As for "socialism," I'm afraid you're just in too far over your head here. Tax-funded government-run programs are as old as civilization. Ever hear of the military? You want to privatize that too?
(It's funny how public schools weren't regarded as "socialism"--even during the Cold War when public school funding increased manyfold!--until the Republican Masters told their sycophants to believe it was.)
You know absolutely nothing of what you're talking about. There is NO PROOF WHATSOEVER that privatization saves the taxpayer money. The facts ALL suggest the opposite: you privatize, you pay more and get less.
Many American schools have tried to privatize (contract out) their lunch rooms and bus services. In EVERY case, the switch cost the taxpayers more.
Come back if you want to discuss the TOPIC. But if you just want to troll, save yourself the trouble.
Daniel, you can be right about Stossel promoting corporate education, (although I don't know that he ever mentioned the term) but it doesn't mean that anything he said about public education is wrong.
I have two preschool age kids. I'm hoping to afford tuition to a private church run school. They private school spends about 3,500 per pupil. Our local public schools spend twice that. The public schools are pretty good by national public school standards, but compared to the private school they suck. (And by international standards as well) Do you wish to sentence my kids to substandard education, just to make some ideological point supporting public schools?
Walter: It's not that Stossel's criticisms don't have any merit at all (he cherry picked out only those shortcomings that would support privatization, which I think is extremely dishonest). Our public schools number in the thousands. With that many employee slots to fill (as with any profession), you will get some bad teachers, bad administrators, bad union representation, etc. (It's a myth to think this will all disappear by privatizing the school system. Teachers will still be unionized, regardless of employer. Only tenure would change, and states are already starting to shift away from that. And who would fill these new private schools? Current teachers, or people who can't meet the current standards of public schools.)
As for funding, do you really think a shift to corporate schools will end all your school tax? No, they will expect to be nothing more than a contractor for the gov't--except that your school tax money will go to a corporation who automatically skims off 10-20% for profits. You will still pay school tax, AND you will have to start paying tuition. And if these corporate-run schools take all that state and federal money, they will also have to abide by "guidelines," which means many of the rules that bind public schools will bind the new private schools.
Private schools are not SYSTEMICALLY better, except that they can CHERRY PICK their students. And as I said before, I could teach a district's top students out of my garage and beat out the left-behinds. Why? Because some students are smarter and/or try harder than others. Private schools mostly get the stronger effort--which also factors in parental expectations.
If schools were privatized, then they too would become "catch-all" schools. First, they want those seats filled. And second, legislators would FORCE them to take lower performing students due to the inevitable public outcry of students being left behind.
Public schools would start getting private school results if they made one simple change: start throwing out the underperformers and misbehavers. They would improve overnight if they did that. But they CAN'T. Nor could the private schools if they suddenly became the backbone of American education. The public would not stand for this "Leave the Second-Best Children Behind" approach.
What I'm saying is that shifting to more privatization will result in private schools being run similar to public schools. Only in the short term will folks like yourself enjoy any benefit. The next families to come along will have to start paying tuition to get what public school students are getting today.
As for your funding comparison, I'd like to know how much money that school receives in non-tuition gifts and donations. And how much money or service they get from the state or fed gov't. Many private schools get aid to pay for non-curricular expenses.
And lastly, how could anyone expect education to improve at this point--public or private--given the Republicans' 10+ year campaign to SMEAR the profession? Teachers used to be lumped in with firemen and police officers as hard working, selfless public servants who keep America going. Thanks to the GOP, teachers are nothing but lazy demon communists. How can you attract BETTER teaching candidates with that kind of professional character assassination going on? Who wants to spend 7+ years in college to get a $30-35,000 (starting out) job and be excoriated daily as human filth? Will the smear campaigns stop once schools are privatized? If they didn't, you'd just see the teaching pool get worse. And if they did, that would just prove my point that this is all about privatization not improving education.
Thanks for responding.
Also to Walter: I could make the same argument about ideology. Why should the public schools be gutted and the entire American education system turned into yet another for-profit enterprise just because right wingers believe rich corporations should get their cut of every government expense?
That's how it looks to me. The business community sees billions spent every year that THEY don't get a cut of. And they resent it just on principle.
And they manipulate frustrated parents into thinking privatization is the answer. Which it isn't. You'll end up with the same problems (as noted above), but the corporations will get a hefty cut of the action.
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