Death by a Thousand Cuts
Privatization in education has been slow but steady. It’s already crippling many public schools.
Eric Langhorst / Flickr
When champions of market-based reform in the United States look at public education, they see two separate activities — the government funds education and the government runs schools. The first is okay with them; the second is not. Reformers want to replace their bête noir — the “monopoly of government-run schools” — with freedom of choice in a competitive market dominated by privately run schools that get government subsidies. Public funding, private management — the four words sum up American-style privatization whether applied to airports, prisons, or elementary and secondary schools.
In the last twenty years, the “ed-reform” movement has assembled a mixed bag of players and policies, complicated by alliances of convenience and half-hidden agendas. Donald Trump’s election and his choice of zealot privatizer Betsy DeVos as US secretary of education bolstered reformers but has also made more Americans wary. What follows is a survey of the controversial movement — where it came from, how it grew, and what it has delivered so far to a nation deeply divided by race and class.
The Backstory in Brief
In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, consensus grew around an expansive vision of education in which government plays a far-reaching role: schooling should be government funded and administered, universal, and compulsory until a certain age. In a nation that was increasingly industrialized and home to new immigrants, citizens expected public schools to accomplish a great deal, including impart general knowledge and practical skills, prepare young people psychologically and socially for self-sufficient adult lives, educate for democratic citizenship, unify a diverse population, and create opportunity for upward mobility. Over time, many Americans came to regard public education as a mainstay of democracy.
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