Donald Trump’s election and the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education sends an anti-professional politician, anti-technocrat, pro-business message. Not surprisingly, DeVos’ preference for charter schools correlates strongly with the family Amway business model.
DeVos has a long history of fermenting change in favor of vouchers and charter schools though she is not herself an educator nor does she have any formal education in teaching and learning.
{mosads}Still, it is fair to recognize what she and other critics have noted — that public education has suffered mightily at the hands of bureaucrats, legislators, and in some cases teachers. Public confidence in public schools has deteriorated steadily, significantly, and pitifully, with Gallup reporting a fifty percent decline from 1973 to 2012.
Decisions made over decades by a variety of actors who collectively shaped public education but were largely individually unaccountable for the result literally invited the voucher/charter school movement. It is not surprising that people with a pro-competitive, pro-business, anti-big government philosophy came to the fore.
Now, after decades, charter schools have become more political football than a clear solution to an ongoing problem. In Michigan, where DeVos had the greatest impact and 80% of charter schools are for-profit, the evidence is mixed (a common result).
A 2013 Stanford study showed charter schools in Michigan on a positive trend line though with inconsistent results: “Slightly more than half of Detroit charter schools were not significantly different from their market.” Middling success in a state where the largest public school system had to be bailed out.
As Forbes reports, “Charter schools are frequently a way for politicians to reward their cronies.” So it is not difficult to find parental frustration, “Who else has time to take their kids to all these places to try to find quality education?”
Setting aside for a moment failed public schools, the voucher option has some inherent problems:
- It undercuts the community school in favor of a geographically dispersed “community.”
- It favors more mobile families, i.e., reliable transportation, more money, and more time.
- It forces schools to compete for resources, both students and supporters, through a process that ensures and often ignores the group of under-resourced, less well-run, less political savvy schools that under-serve their students.
- It fosters a misalignment between social goals and short-term financial ones, creating known externalities, not unlike for-profit prisons. In these situations too often politics, not markets, determine profits.
This investor-fueled model for K-12 education in Michigan can and does leave behind significant numbers of students. Scott Romney — a Harvard-trained lawyer, Michigan businessman and brother of Mitt Romney — noted, “The point was to raise all schools … Instead, we’ve had a total and complete collapse of education in this city … This is a public service, this isn’t just a business … I don’t believe in the free market for police or fire.”
Assessment is tricky because poor learning can be linked to non-education variables like home life and regular meals. Other variables include problems public schools wrestled with over decades of social change, such as the number of children born to single mothers; economic decline or stagnation for 60-80% of households, and for which solutions require resources. The seemingly endless debate about the impact of the Head Start program illustrates the difficulty and politics of learning assessment.
The DeVos family accumulated wealth by growing Amway, a multi level marketing (MLM) company that offers an “opportunity” that some former distributors warn against, a culture described as cult-like, and one that likely results in less not more money for the vast majority of participants.
Though firm data is difficult to obtain because Amway is private, I suspect that after a half a century it derives a miniscule percent of total profits from product sales in the U.S., having conceivably exhausted or nearly exhausted its potential recruit base.
For example, it is difficult to find independent evidence of consumer preference for Amway brands in the U.S., whereas independent evidence of the popularity of other brands, such as P&G and Unilever, can be readily found.
The similarities between the voucher/charter school approach and the MLM business model are obvious as both represent a pro-competitive, pro-business, anti-big government philosophy. Both believe market mechanisms produce the best results by presenting opportunities to reward success based on individual choice and commitment.
In spirit, both purport to fairly parcel out rewards, and therefore also the absence of rewards, based on market dynamics free from manipulations. Needless to say, that is nonsense.
The manipulation of data in Ohio shows the success of charter schools can and has been manipulated. And research by TruthInAdvertising.org documents widespread misrepresentations and out-right fraud among MLM companies’ representatives.
The purist defense of market forces to fix our schools or to fairly present low-cost entry opportunities to own one’s own business fails in multiple ways:
- The market does not exist beyond the reach of those wishing to politicize the results.
- The market only works well, according to its own theory, if buyers have solid, reliable information on the quality and price of the product, service, or business opportunity being offered.
- Adam Smith’s market requires that winners be unable to influence who wins and who loses in future competitions. While I know more about MLM companies than charter schools, I can say with confidence that all of these failings can be found in each arena.
Finally, purists often present a survival-of-the-fittest Darwinian notion that actually has little regard for those who, according to the determinations of their flawed market, are less fit. Is that really what we expect for our children? Is this the promise of the MLM “opportunity” for those with few options?
In education or business the notion is dangerous as some who accumulate wealth and power then go on to shape the future of market competition and the economic allocation of resources.