Public schools should not be run 'like a business' (opinion from Larry Lee) (al.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Larry Lee

It's not uncommon for someone to passionately declare that schools should be run "like a business." Chances are good that this someone may have a strong business background.

Someone very much like Jamie Vollmer was more than two decades ago when he was president of the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company in Iowa. (It should be noted that People magazine called their product "Best Ice Cream in America" and President Ronald Reagan served it in the White House.)

In 1988, Vollmer became a member of the Iowa Business and Education Roundtable and two years later became the group's Executive Director. During this time he honed his critique about how schools should operate as a business.

"I was speaking all over the state," recalls Vollmer, who was recently in Alabama making a presentation, telling folks, "we needed reforms that would turn up the heat by imposing accountability measures that rewarded success and punished failure. We needed to raise standards, demand rigor, reject excuses and introduce competition."

"I preached the business gospel of school reform in all 99 Iowa counties and received an ovation at every stop," Vollmer says. "In retrospect, I was the perfect double threat: ignorant and arrogant. I knew nothing about teaching or managing a school, but I was sure I had the answers."
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more: http://blog.al.com/birmingham-news-commentary/2013/01/public_schools_should_not_be_r.html




A short, but good, read, with some pithy quotes.

[Still Sensible]

1. A terrific epiphany. n/t

[RC]

2. Bu$h the Lesser tried to run the government like a business.

Fired lots of government workers and rehired them as contract workers. It cost the government much more because of paying the companies the contract workers actually did work for. The contract workers took a hit on income.

You can bet there was lots of push-back. Government is not a business and cannot be run as one. That flat out does not work.

[TheBlackAdder]

3. You get what you pay for... Cheap In - Cheap Out!

[ReRe]

4. I highly recommend this article,...

K&R

.... be sure to read it in it's entirety, if you agree that education should NOT be privatized. Larry Lee tells us about Jamie Vollmer, who initially supported a business model of administering education, but the more he learned and researched, he metamorphosed into the opposite view. x 100000000

[Starry Messenger]

5. k&r

[Baitball Blogger]

6. Only in America could we still be talking about running government like a business

when our biggest business institutions have been an unmitigated FAIL.

And, if you talk to true free marketers, they'll blame the government for interfering with the free market principle because they didn't allow the banks to go bankrupt. Total failure, is the only way that banks will self-regulate -- according to them.

Meanwhile, millions of people could lose their houses, go hungry start mini-wars and I'm sure they will have a way of blaming that on government for not investing enough money in a police force. 'Cuz, a heavy police force, for some reason, is not associated as a symptom of big government.

I need to get some coffee.

[reteachinwi]

7. "The farther the decision maker is from the child, the dumber the decision gets."

"By and large in business you can control your inputs he says. You can make sure each bolt you install meets certain tolerances. In other words, you can make sure you're not using bad blueberries. Schools can't. Today's teachers now stand before the most diverse, distracted, demanding generation of students the world has ever seen."

And they need us to create opportunities for them so they will be happy, productive, effective adults. Labeling them with a test score so a teacher can have her/his pay cut or be fired doesn't get there.

[LWolf]

8. The blueberry story

has been around for at least a decade.

The situation now is quite a bit worse than it was when Vollmer came out with it.

It serves to point out that corporate reformers and their political puppets don't give a damn what compelling arguments, what facts, what realities they are presented with. If it doesn't fit their agenda, they are deaf to it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Love the Blueberry Story!!

Never tire of it.

[Uncle Joe]

10. The lady nailed it, "The blueberry moment"

At the end of his remarks, the school superintendent reminded him that he was to end with questions and answers. As soon as he called for questions, the English teacher raised her hand and asked, "Mr. Vollmer, if you are standing on your company's receiving dock and you discover a shipment of blueberries that do not meet your standards, what do you do?"

"I send them back," replied Vollmer.

At that, the teacher jumped to her feet and told him, "We can never send back the blueberries our suppliers send us. We take them big, small, rich, poor, hungry, abused, confident, curious, homeless, frightened, rude, creative, violent and brilliant. We take them with head lice, ADHD and advanced asthma."

Vollmer will never forget the moment. "She challenged my simplistic, self-serving beliefs armed with nothing more than the knowledge born of her daily experience--in other words, the truth--and in doing so she forced me to rethink my views."

Thanks for the thread, eppur_se_muova.