Are public schools a service, a right, or a business?
12th July 2021 · 0 Comments
“Today, education is perhaps the essential function of state and local governments. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right that must be made available to all on equal terms.”
– Brown v. Board of Education,
Supreme Court of the United States,
May 17, 1954
PART II
Depending on who you ask, education is either a service, a right or a business.
There is no doubt that public education is a service provided by states. What is up for debate is whether education is a right or a business.
Education is not explicitly guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, although it should be. If it were an individual right backed by the Constitution, states with ill-intentions, like Louisiana, wouldn’t have the right to privatize taxpayer-funded education and all quasi-public charter schools to operate with no accountability or oversight.
Nonetheless, most Supreme Court justices deciding Brown v. Board in 1954, standing on the precipice of a civil rights revolution, thought so. They put it in writing: “…Where the state has undertaken to provide it (education), it is a right….”
The United Nations recognizes education as a human right and necessary for human development. The U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. … education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) agrees with the United Nation’s position on education. He launched a hot debate over education during his 2016 run for the presidency. “Education should be a right, not a privilege. We need a revolution in the way that the United States funds higher education,” he said.
When Sanders declared education an individual right and promised free college tuition for all, his Republican opponents stoked fear among some in the electorate by claiming Sanders would run a socialist government.
“Yes! All kids living in the United States have the right to free public education. And the Constitution requires that all kids be given equal educational opportunity no matter what their race, ethnic background, religion, or sex, or whether they are rich or poor, citizen or non-citizen,” the ACLU wrote in “Your Right to Equal Education.”
Sanders, the U.N., and the ACLU are not alone in thinking education is a human right. At least three dozen countries agree and provide free or nearly free university-level education to their citizens.
President Joe Biden either agrees with Sanders that education is a human right, or he is bowing to pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Biden’s American Families Plan includes free community college and two additional years of early childhood education.
The U.S. is competitive in the field of education compared to other countries. U.S. News & World Report places the U.S. at #1 on its Best Countries for Education list, while the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, has the U.S. in the #6 slot.
But the news isn’t all good. The U.S. is behind other countries in math and science scores, and it has been decreasing its investment in education over the past three decades, while other countries have increased theirs. President Biden’s education plan includes millions in new spending and programs to help the U.S. catch up to other nations’ math and science scores.
If the U.S. is making the grade, why isn’t Louisiana pursuing the best practices responsible for the U.S. rankings?
Another ongoing debate in the education sector is whether public schools are businesses.
Some education consultants are adamant about schools being businesses. Strategic EdTech sells education technology to schools.
In a 2017 blog post on its website, Strategic EdTech’s writes: “Nearly all schools are non-profit, and educators take pride in working purely on behalf of the public good. But we are, in fact, businesses.” The post continued to say, “Businesses operate by providing a product or service to their customers. Schools operate to provide education (a service) to students (customers).”
Rhetoric aside, it’s clear that tech companies like Strategic EdTech are guided more by capitalism than altruism. Education technology is big business. In 2020, the U.S. was predicted to spend $1.3 trillion on education technology.
Businesses operate to make money. Public schools do not. Even though Louisiana lawmakers passed legislation to transfer taxpayers’ money to a boondoggle of private and non-profit firms to run charter schools like private corporations, without accountability or oversight by the elected school board, schools are not businesses.
The only ones making money are the corporations running the schools and providing ancillary services like Educate Now, a Leslie Jacobs company. Jacobs is the self-described architect of “school accountability” and the charter school movement in Louisiana. She is the mother of high-stakes testing.
In New Orleans, the nation’s first all-charter school district is reminiscent of an antebellum plantation system, where the owners profit from the work of unpaid enslaved Africans. Today, the overseers of this failed charter “experiment” are using Black students to enrich themselves.
The people running the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) and the Department of Education should be ashamed of themselves. They’ve switched and changed the grading system of public schools’ performance scores (based on student achievement on tests) umpteen times to give the appearance that schools are making substantial progress. A letter grade C is generally equal to a numerical scale of 70-79, but a 60 is equivalent to a C in Louisiana.
No matter what jimmy-rigged grading system education officials use, they can’t hide the truth. And the truth is that Louisiana’s education officials are failing our public school children.
U.S. News measured how well states educate students, and Louisiana ranked near the bottom of its Best States for Education list. Louisiana ranks 48th in higher education and 46th in K-12 education.
Given the minimum education requirement the state mandates, we must ask, what value is a minimum education?
Louisiana education officials provide this minimum education for $11,452 per pupil. And that’s what our children get for that pittance, a minimum education. The state spends 3.6 percent of taxpayer revenue on education. That’s not enough. Benjamin Franklin, a founding father, statesman, inventor, and philosopher, opined, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Most of all, our students need the intangibles from educators. They need a holistic education that prepares their minds and bodies to take on the world and gives them tools for creating productive, lucrative careers.
Language arts, math and science are essential, but our children need to learn African-American history and Louisiana and World History. They need physical education, exposure to the arts, and the opportunity to participate in sports and physical education. They need help in choosing career paths, be it higher education or vocational.
Most of all, they need educators who care about them. And all the money in the world can’t buy that.
This article originally published in the July 12, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
