Privatizing education

I am increasingly concerned over the role that educators are allowing business and industry to play in education. Morning Edition on NPR featured a story this morning to addressed that issue:

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/20/137172536/fight-ensues-over-facebook-money-for-n-j-schools

For me the problem can be even more localized. In the last couple of years, I have been associated with a principal who has allowed a business-person-turned-philanthropist to gain deep access into his school. The philanthropist's advice as taken when making purchase decisions, curriculum decisions, and even decisions related to long-term planning. Now, I understand the reasoning... "the philanthropist has some money and we can gain some resources that would otherwise by unavailable." But one has to wonder if the costs of the philanthropist's cash is worth it: I observed several years' worth of planning and training made obsolete when the philanthropist decided that the school should use different software. I observed the school make an unplanned purchase of several tens of thousands of dollars so that the philanthropist's vision could come closer. I saw several educators become disenfranchised so that the professional development money spent for those teachers was effectively lost to the school.

Some of those disenfranchised educators and I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and we concluded that the approximately $25,000 from the philanthropist had cost the school about $50,000. Alternatively, we could conclude that the $50,000 spent by the school had resulted in $75,000 in purchase.

When we consider, however, that much of that money as spent on redundant technology (i.e. "upgrading" software that was perfectly functional) and that the philanthropist has ended the relationship with the school and there are several teacher-leaders who were displaced by the philanthropist and who do not anticipate returning to a leadership role in the school, the negative effect of the experience on the school culture and climate will be long-lasting; those effects will be around long after the technology purchased by the philanthropist becomes obsolete.