The Business of Education

Networks of Power and Wealth in America

Joel Spring, John Eric Frankson, Corie A. McCallum, Diane Price Banks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781315465395
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Business of Education—a comprehensive view of how education policy is made in the US and, in some cases, globally—analyzes and critiques the influence of educational policy networks in a wide range of contexts and from a variety of perspectives, including testing, college preparation, juvenile detention centers, special education, the arts, teacher evaluation systems, education of undocumented immigrants, college faculty preparation, and financial aid. A network chart in most chapters illustrates how the major political actors, mainly private philanthropic foundations, for-profit companies, government officials, and politicians involved in the network, are linked. Joel Spring, internationally renowned scholar and analyst of educational policy, situates and frames the network studies in an introduction discussing general theories of education policy networks.

1
THE NEW POLITICS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION

Joel Spring

The chapters in this book illuminate the complex web of venture philanthropists, politicians, and for-profit businesses influencing today’s educational politics. It is difficult to place a value judgement on this educational power structure because of differences in values and goals of the various actors. One thing that can be said is that the new politics of education has decreased public control of schools and that it tends to favor the power of wealth and for-profit education companies. On the other hand, many act not for personal profit, but because of an altruistic desire to improve schools. However, these altruistic efforts may result in ideological conflict. Some people might, as I will discuss later, believe that choice, market forces, and charter schools are key to school improvement, while others think government intervention and control are necessary to ensure equality of educational opportunity.

This complex web of economic and political relationships influences the knowledge schools disseminate and how public education will be funded. What is taught in schools is not neutral. There are continuous struggles about teaching economic and political ideas. There are concerns about how ethnic groups and religions will be presented in the curricula and books. Some see schools as a source of profit. Book publishers, computer and software companies, tutoring and testing organizations, and makers of classroom apparatuses compete for public school funds. The result is an educational system that is constantly changing and creating problems of policy implementation, where the general public is often clueless about what’s happening in schools.¹

To exemplify the new politics of education and the web of relationships, I will discuss the educational career of James H. Shelton. Then I will examine the evolution of political control from nineteenth-century school boards to the present complex set of influences by venture philanthropists, for-profit companies, education networks, and federal, state, and local politicians. This will be followed by a short theoretical discussion of the new shadow elite and the new nation state.

James Shelton: A Case Study of the New Shadow Elite

Janine R. Wedel would consider James Shelton’s career as exemplifying the shadow elite currently determining government policies.² Wedel would call Shelton a flexian, who makes career moves between government, for-profit companies, universities and philanthropic organizations.³ For example, it was announced in the May 11, 2016, Education Week that Shelton would step down as president and chief impact officer for the for-profit 2U technology firm to head the education efforts of a new educational philanthropic organization created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Prior to the presidency of 2U, Sheldon was U.S. deputy secretary of education. He was recruited to this position from being a program director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and partner at the NewSchools Venture Fund.⁴ The NewSchools Venture Fund describes itself: “As a nonprofit venture philanthropy firm, we use the charitable donations we receive to support education entrepreneurs who are transforming public education to create great results for all students.”⁵

Prior to the NewSchools Venture Fund, the Gates Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education, as described on the U.S. Department of Education’s website:

Shelton … co-founded LearnNow, a school management company that later was acquired by Edison Schools. He spent over four years as a senior management consultant with McKinsey & Company in Atlanta, Ga., where he advised CEOs and other executives on issues related to corporate strategy, business development, organizational design, and operational effectiveness. Upon leaving McKinsey, he joined Knowledge Universe, Inc., where he launched, acquired and operated education-related businesses.⁶

Shelton’s career illustrates policy networks linking private philanthropy, government, and for-profit businesses. Others have also emphasized these policy networks.⁷

This new form of governance involving shadow elites is discussed in a global context by British sociologist Stephen Ball. He calls it “Global Education Inc.” and links global philanthropy and for-profit companies to the development of education policies within different nation-states. His network models span the globe. He writes, “So, I contend that policy networks do constitute a new form of governance, albeit not in a single and coherent form, and bring into play in the policy process new sources of authority and indeed a ‘market of authorities’.”⁸ Ball’s concern is with groups advocating free markets and the reduction of national governments’ role in education and the support and spread of these ideas by global philanthropies and educational businesses. Others have also noted the work of these new global policy networks and their effects on schooling.⁹

Can U.S. Education Be Democratic: From School Boards to the Corporate State

The policy networks described above raise issues about democratic control of U.S. schools. What does democratic control of schools mean? Does it include democratic control of the content of the public school curriculum and selection of teachers—the two most important aspects of schooling? Of course, the overarching question is whether or not public schools should be democratically controlled, or should they be controlled by educational experts or the policy networks described in this volume.

Elected representative governance was the earliest form of U.S. public school control. Locally elected school boards selected curricula, teachers, and administrators, and allocated local property tax for buildings, maintenance, and salaries. There were complaints about local wealth and power dominating school board elections and political favoritism in hiring teachers and administrators. In the early twentieth century, several studies focused on the wealth of school board members.¹⁰

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, increasing involvement of state governments and the growth of bureaucratic school administration eroded the power of school boards. State governments played a greater role in credentialing teachers and school administrators and defining general goals for schools.¹¹ These changes reduced democratic control of what is taught in schools and increased the controlling role of the business community.¹²

The federal role expanded in the middle of the twentieth century as national legislation was passed to use the schools in the military race with the Soviet Union. The federal government exerted power primarily by offering money to local and state governments to carry out federal policies. These efforts led to the federal government influencing local curricula, particularly in science and math. During the same period, the civil rights movement demanded schools be desegregated and that schools help in ending poverty. The resulting legislation, the 1958 Educational Defense Act, 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education, put local schools in service to national politicians and policy objectives.¹³

The argument in the 1960s that education could end poverty came from economists, who also promoted free markets and competition for schools.¹⁴ Key to this effort was passage of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act.¹⁵ During the same period, economists argued for increasing family control over education by giving families the power to choose schools for their children. The first choice plan was made by Milton Friedman, who portrayed public schools as monopolies that could be improved by competition between public, private, and for-profit schools.¹⁶ As a result, since the 1960s there have been ongoing debates about school vouchers, tax credits, and creating and expanding charter school networks. Some suggested schools would function better if they were operated for profit.

In addition to increased federal involvement, in the 1970s there was rapid growth of venture philanthropy designed to influence school policy. James Smith, in his 1991 book The Idea Brokers, wrote, “In the early 1970s, executives in a handful of traditionally conservative foundations redefined their programs with the aim of shaping the public policy agenda and constructing a network of conservative institutions and scholars.”¹⁷ A leader and articulate spokesperson for the movement was William Simon, who left his job in 1976 as Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon and Ford administrations to become head of the John Olin Foundation. The goal, in Simon’s words was, “to support those individuals and institutions who are working to strengthen the free enterprise system.”¹⁸

Reflecting Simon’s economic beliefs, the preface and foreword for his book A Time for Truth were written, respectively, by Milton Friedman and free market advocate F. A. Hayek. In the preface, Friedman sounded the warning that intellectual life in the United States was under the control of “socialists and interventionists, who have wrongfully appropriated in this country the noble label ‘liberal’ and who have been the intellectual architects of our suicidal course.”¹⁹ Applying marketplace concepts to intellectual life, Friedman argued that the payoff for these “liberals” was support by an entrenched government bureaucracy. In his mind, the liberal elite and the government bureaucracy fed off each other. Using a phrase that would be repeated by conservatives throughout the rest of the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, Friedman contended that “the view that government is the problem, not the cure,” is hard for the public to understand.²⁰ According to Friedman’s plea, saving the country required...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The New Politics of American Education
• 2 Admitting Privilege
• 3 AVID about College: A Look into AVID’s Governing Structure
• 4 A Not So Individualized Education Plan: Examining NYC DOE Contract with Maximus that Brought Us SESIS
• 5 Turning Against (Public) Arts Education: An Arts Perspective of the Business of Education
• 6 Policy Networks and Political Decisions Influencing the Dream Act: The Power of the Dreamers
• 7 The Call for Faculty Preparation
• 8 Exploring Federal Financial Aid Networks: Who Cares and Why?
• 9 A Political Economy of Incarceration: Race, Schooling, and the Criminal Justice System
• 10 A Shared Path to Success: The Promise and Challenge of Special Education in New York City
• List of Contributors
• Index