“You can’t get people to drop something that works, unless you make it stop working.” – Corky Evans (2009)
When teachers express concern about privatization of education services, we hear: “Come on now...you teachers are just paranoid. Where’s the proof?”
We all know that the Liberal government believes in a free market ideology. That ideology drives their privatization agenda. We have seen this agenda in the various attempts at P3s, the privatization of important hospital services and in the undermining of BC Hydro while at the same time promoting private Run of the River projects.
Public Education is not immune to that ideology. The biggest difference is that because public education is so important to so many people, the government must be very careful about not just privatizing openly. They have to do so by stealth.
How do they do that? The privatization of public education is being facilitated by underfunding and the accountability agenda. Both are by design and are intended specifically to undermine public confidence in the public education system, over time.
“You can’t get people to drop something that works, unless you make it stop working.” – Corky Evans (2009)
The Liberal government believes that private is better and here is how they have gone about trying to “convince” the public.
1. First, underfund. If you withhold funding, important services are lost and if important services are lost, parents become dissatisfied with the public system. It is easy, for the government, once this happens, to implement “accountability measures. Those with enough money might bail on the public system at this point.
2. Implement the Accountability agenda
a. Keep the accountability demands as far away from the government as possible. Focus all accountability on the teachers
b. Bring in “Accountability Contracts” (which were quickly changed to “achievement contracts" in B.C.) Insist on standardization of goals and demand loads and loads of data. Design goals so that success is near impossible. That way more standardized tests can be justified.
c. Standardized tests – out of the demand for data comes standardized tests (FSAs, Grade 10 and 11 exams, a myriad of district wide tests).
d. Ranking of Schools – standardized testing then gives rise to the ranking of schools. These rankings undermine public confidence and seriously undermine teacher and student morale. The public calls for more standardization in the classroom so that the kids can do better on the standardized tests.
e. Standardization of education, results in a loss of autonomy for teachers and with the loss of autonomy, the education experience of students is diminished. Once the educational experience is diminished (i.e. narrowing curriculum, scripted lessons), private options look more attractive. Throw in public funding for private schools and the ability for full funding for private distributed learning and soon the public system is a shell of its former self.
When you consider the pattern established by past practice and you look at what is happening in the U.S. with private charter schools, I think you can dismiss paranoia and say ...”you teachers are so perceptive.”
