<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Gail Collins, also from the NY Times:<br><br>
<div class="timestamp">May 11, 2011</div>
<h1>Reading, ’Riting and Revenues</h1>
<h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Gail Collins" class="meta-per">GAIL COLLINS</a></h6>
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American education is going to be reformed until it rolls over and begs
for mercy. Vouchers! Guns on campus! Just the other day, the Florida
State Legislature took a giant step toward ending the scourge of droopy
drawers in high school by upping the penalties for underwear-exposing
pants. </div>
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Today, let’s take a look at the privatization craze and the conviction
that there is nothing about molding young minds that can’t be improved
by the profit motive. </div>
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Enrollment in for-profit colleges has ballooned to almost two million,
propelled by more than $25 billion in federal student loans, many of
which are apparently never going to be repaid. More than 700 public K-12
schools around the country are now managed by for-profit companies.
Last week, in Ohio, the State House went for the whole hog and approved
legislation that would allow for-profit businesses to open up their own
taxpayer-financed charter schools. </div>
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“It takes the public out of public education,” complained Bill Sims of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools. </div>
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This exciting new plan, which seemed to have been inserted into the
state budget bill by a magical invisible hand, would also reduce
oversight. It got a rave review in The Columbus Dispatch from an op-ed
contributor named Thomas Needles, who cheered legislators for trying to
end the “drip-drop of wrongheaded regulation” of charter schools.
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Needles is a consultant for White Hat Management, the largest company
currently managing charter schools in Ohio — and with none too great a
record, according to the National Education Policy Center, which said
that only 2 percent of the schools White Hat runs have scored well on
yearly progress tests. The owner of White Hat is a gynormous donor to
the state Republican Party. Not that that would make any difference.
Just saying. </div>
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So that’s the pathbreaking privatization news in Ohio. Now let’s take a
look at Texas, which has been leading the way in putting for-profit
companies in charge of certifying teachers. </div>
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“Very interesting and very disturbing,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a
professor of education at Stanford who studies teacher certification
issues. Darling-Hammond says that when the federal government began
demanding certified teachers in every classroom, Texas was among the
states that responded by creating alternative certification programs,
some of which have requirements slightly less rigorous than those for
the trainers at neighborhood gyms. Most of the new teachers in Texas —
particularly at schools in poor neighborhoods — come from alternative
certification programs. </div>
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Then, the Legislature invited for-profit businesses into the game. “Ever
since then, the innovation and competition has been phenomenal,”
claimed Vernon Reaser, the president of Texas Teachers, the largest of
the state’s alt-cert companies. </div>
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Here is one indicator of how innovative things are getting. Texas is
currently considering — although not with any great intensity — a bill
that would require that people who go through these programs spend a
couple of days practice teaching before they are turned loose in their
own classrooms. </div>
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The sponsor is Representative Mike Villarreal of San Antonio. Villarreal
first came to my attention as the legislator who proposed requiring
that the course content in public school sex education classes be
medically accurate. The man is a positive genius for coming up with
bills to make the Texas education system do something we really had
assumed it had been doing all along. None of which make it out of
committee. </div>
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At a public hearing on Villarreal’s bill, Reaser vigorously denounced
the idea of requiring would-be teachers to actually get classroom
experience as part of their training: “Practice teachers in front of
kids that aren’t practice learning!” </div>
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To get an alternative teaching certificate in Texas you need to take
coursework and have 30 hours of “field-based” experience, 15 of which
can be spent watching videos. Villarreal says some programs fill up the
other 15 with things like chaperoning field trips. </div>
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It’s not clear how many people get hired as full-time teachers without
ever having stood in front of a classroom for a single hour. The $4,195
Texas Teachers program (its ubiquitous billboards read: “Want to Teach?
When Can You Start?”) is a little opaque. For instance, Reaser assured
me in a phone conversation that his students were required to have a
variety of in-person interactions with their instructors even though the
Web site says you can opt for “fully online instruction.” </div>
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“On our Web site, we intentionally don’t say everything,” Reaser
explained. “It’s basically to get you to call us and ask us.” </div>
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When we all started clamoring for more investment in education, I don’t
think we envisioned it going into corporate profits. We have seen the
future, and the good news is that the kids in Florida will be wearing
belts. </div>
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<br> <br></div><div>Ron Force<br>Moscow Idaho USA<br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Arial" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></b></font><br></div></div></div></body></html>