All posts tagged K-12

The Second Wave of Public School Privatization: Part 2

Part 2 of the blog covering Reuters correspondent Stephanie Simon’s article “Private Firms Eyeing Profits from Public Schools“…

After finishing her discussion on the financial motives that have caused many investors and venture capitalists to enter the education services business, Simon moved on to cover what this new trend’s supporters and critics are saying about what it will mean for students, their teachers, and schools.  She reported that among the supporters of the movement to increase the role of private (for profit) companies in public education, one of the biggest is Larry Shagrin who was the keynote speaker at the investment conference in Manhattan.  According to her article, he talked about how during a time when cost cutting is already the standard in public schools, the need for education reform to catch up to the “healthcare and other sector [industries] that have already utilized outsourcing” to increase their efficiency has become all the more necessary.  She further noted that “education entrepreneur John Katzman” added to this sentiment by “urging investors to look for companies developing software that can replace teachers for segments of the school day” in order to “drive down the labor costs” of paying “highly qualified teachers” by replacing them with technology driven alternatives.

After finishing her coverage of the movement’s supporters, Simon moved on to discuss the comments that  some of it’s critics like New York University professor and education historian Diane Ravitch had to say about the “corporate profiteers invading public schools.”  Simon starts her coverage of Professor Ravitch’s critical analysis by discussing her assertion that the new business of “firing the staff and turning the building over to private management” services have “in effect been set up by the bipartisan education reform movement that has placed an enourmous emphasis on standardized test scores.”  Simon further noted that Professor Ravitch described the situation that was created through legislation like NCLB as “a new frontier” where “the private equity and hedge fund guys are circling public education” with the backward priorities of profit first and quality second.  Ms. Simon then wraps up the dissent with Professor Ravitch’s quote where she talks about how the private (for profit) companies are “taking education which ought to be in a different sphere [from profit goals] where we’re constantly concerned about raising quality” instead of  “applying the business metric: How do we cut costs?”

-To see part 1 of this blog, click here.

-To look at other posts on a wide variety of topics related to K-12 education click here.

(Originally posted on Saturday,  08/18/2012)

Leave a comment
by educationbasics4o77th on August 19, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Articles, NCLB, Reform Strategies
Tagged , ,

Posted by educationbasics4o77th on August 19, 2012

https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/08-18-2012/

The Second Wave of Public School Privatization: Part 1

While the highly emotional and philosophical debate over the place of private schools and charter schools in public education continues to generate incredible amounts of attention, the steadily increasing role of private (for-profit) companies in public K-12 education has gone largely unnoticed.  After researching this relatively unreported trend, Reuters correspondent Stephanie Simon took an in depth look at it in her article Private Firms Eyeing Profits From Public Schools.  Ms. Simon began her article by talking about a recent meeting in Manhattan where about 100 investors and venture capitalists were listening to a presentation about the potential profits to be earned by entering the education services business.  Not surprisingly, the amount of money to be made from the education related areas of our economy is massive since the United States spends “more than $500 billion a year educating kids ages five through 18.”  She then followed this astounding number with the fact that investments in education related businesses by venture capitalists have risen by nearly 3,000% since 2005 to around $389,000,000 per year.  This rapid rise in the number of investments in private education companies is made even more incredible because of the fact that even though the money has always been there, “public education has [historically] been a tough market for private firms to break into — fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.”  After finishing her outline of the general financial motivations covering why private companies have started to enter the K-12 education business in record numbers, Ms. Simon then began to look at what this trend would mean for the individual students, educators, and schools…

-To see supporter and critic analysis of this new trend, check out part 2 right here.

-To look at other posts on a wide variety of topics related to K-12 education click here.

(Originally posted on Friday,  08/17/2012)

Leave a comment
by educationbasics4o77th on August 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Articles
Tagged , , ,

Posted by educationbasics4o77th on August 17, 2012

https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/article/

Race to the Top

Race to the Top is a $4.35 billion dollar education reform program that is run through the United States Department of Education.  The program was first created under the Obama administration through funds that were provided from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  The idea behind the program is that by forcing the states to compete for funds that can be used to implement education reform in their respective states, then the reform process would be both innovative and transparent.

The way the program works is by having the states that want to receive the funds submit proposals to the Department of Education in a series of three phases.  The Department of Education then takes the time to analyze and evaluate the different proposals on a 500 point scale that includes the use of performance based standards, the promotion of charter schools, increases in teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), and improvements in teacher quality among other things.  After the scores are calculated in each phase, the winners are given grants to implement their plans that can range from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars.

After the initial success of the program in 2010, the Obama administration asked for an additional $1.35 billion dollars for the program during the 2011 fiscal year.  In addition to that, his administration also created a number of sister programs that were designed to focus specifically on early learning challenges and classroom level reforms.

Throughout the time that the program has been in existence, RTTT has managed to retain a largely positive view from individuals across the political spectrum because of the innovative and transparent ways that it has promoted education reform.  Having said that, the program is also not without it’s critics.  For example, NYU education professor Diane Ravich has pointed out in an article of hers that some of the  “nation’s leading civil rights organizations [have] insisted that access to federal funding should be based on need and not competition” like it is in Race to the Top.

-To look at other posts on a wide variety of topics related to K-12 education click here.

(Originally posted on Wednesday,  08/15/2012)

Leave a comment
by educationbasics4o77th on August 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Reform Strategies, RTTT
Tagged , , ,

Posted by educationbasics4o77th on August 15, 2012

https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/education-positions-of-the-republican-presidential-ticket/

K-12 Education Reform Strategies

K-12 Education Reform Strategy Suggestions from the NCEE’s Report

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform

“What would the education policies and practices of the United States be if they were based on the policies and practices of the countries that now lead the world in student performance?”  Seeing as how the United States’ K-12 education system has not been able to call itself one of the top performing for well over a decade now, the importance of this previously unanswered question becomes all too clear.  Fortunately, this question is also exactly what the President and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) set out to answer in the report that he wrote at the request of the OECD (which is the same organization that conducts the try-yearly PISA exam).  The report specifically looks at the top performing nations (TPN) of Canada, China, Singapore, Finland, and Japan for guidance because their education systems are all ranked among the best in the world and share most of the same successful reform strategies.  After analyzing and comparing all of the data from the TPNs, Mr. Tucker’s report was able to identify seven reforms/elements that the United States should try to incorporate into it’s K-12 education system.  These seven reforms include “aggressive international benchmarking, the higher quality of the teaching force, the use of aligned instructional systems and external examinations that measure complex thinking skills, the decision to get all students to those standards, the use of professional systems of work organization instead of blue-collar models, funding systems that put the most funds behind the students who are hardest to educate, and coherence of the design of the overall education system itself, in all of its particulars” (page 35 of the report).  After listing the different reforms in the report, he then went on to explain each of them in greater detail (which I have summarized in the list below).

1) Aggressive international benchmarking: the incorporation of successful reforms and goals of top performing nations in ways that make sense for the United States.

2) The higher quality of the teaching force: average teachers being of higher quality as a result of better pay, stricter standards, better educations, & better training.

3) Aligned curriculum and external exams: expansion nation wide unifying curriculum programs like the CCSSI and the use of less frequent but better timed standardized testing.

4) Decision to get all students to standards: (self explanatory).

5) Changing the type of teachers union used: changing teachers unions from the generalized industrial model to the higher quality/better trained professional model.

6) Funding that targets hardest to educate: shift from local to state centered funding system that can focus on helping the students that are the hardest to educate.

7) Coherently designed education system: syncing all of the education laws, policies, and programs together in a seamless manner (unlike the currently uncoordinated one).

-To look at other posts on a wide variety of topics related to K-12 education click here.

(Originally posted on Thursday,  08/09/2012)

Leave a comment
by educationbasics4o77th on August 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Reform Strategies
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by educationbasics4o77th on August 10, 2012

https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/the-basics-2/

The Basics

Reading: 17th                              Science: 23rd                              Math: 31st

One of the things that we like to do more than anything else in the United States is talk about how we are the leaders of the free world. We talk about how we have the most freedoms, the greatest economy, the strongest military, and the best education system as a result of the democratic system of government that we created after we declared our independence from England in 1776.  However, the unfortunate truth that every student, parent, and educator in this country knows is that our primary education system is failing us and is in desperate need of reform.  This sobering truth was once again shown in the results of the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test where American 15 year olds from across the country were ranked 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math when compared to their peers around the world.

Despite the fact that the problems that our primary and secondary education system suffers from have been known for decades, very little has been done to reverse this trend.  This is not to say that nothing has been done in attempting to fix the problems plaguing our education system, just that for a variety of reasons including political differences, a lack of certainty on how to fix the problems, and the fact that most people do not know enough about how our education system works has led us to a point where our education system no longer seems capable of real reform.

It is with these issues in mind that I have decided to create this blog through which I hope to be able to help address some of these problems.  I intend to do this over the next couple of weeks by trying to explain some of the more complicated laws that dictate education policy in this country, talk about what is currently being done to address the major problems, and discuss some of the methods that are being used to do so.  A few of the many issues that I will be talking about in this blog in the coming weeks will include the No Child Left Behind Act, Race to the Top, some of the reform strategies that have been successful in other countries, and what some of the different policies that the two Presidential candidates hold.  If you are even remotely interested in learning more about the problems in our K-12 education system so that you can do your part to help fix it, or just want to know more about education in our country, then you should visit us on Thursday at https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com to see the next post on some of the reform strategies that have been used successfully in Top Performing Nations across the world.

(Originally posted on Tuesday,  08/07/2012)

Leave a comment
by educationbasics4o77th on August 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Purpose
Tagged , ,

Posted by educationbasics4o77th on August 9, 2012

https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/the-basics/

The Beginnings of a Blog About Education

Welcome to the basics.  This website is a new blog that will talk about a variety of issues related to K-12 education in the United States.  Over the next few weeks we will be talking about some of the different education policies that are being debated, what some of the current programs are, and what the people in power are doing to address the issues.  If you are like most Americans who know that the education system in this country is in trouble but do not know enough about the complex education policies to do something about it, then you should tune in here at https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com to find out more.

Leave a comment
by educationbasics4o77th on July 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Purpose
Tagged ,

Posted by educationbasics4o77th on July 26, 2012

https://educationbasics4o77th.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/hello-world/