| | Bracey, Gerald W. (2002). The War Against America's
Public Schools: Privatizing Schools, Commercializing
Education. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
$25 ISBN: 0-321-08073-4
Reviewed by Mary P. McGuire
State University of New York, Cortland
July 17, 2002
Bracey makes a convincing argument that the whole school
choice spectrum—from charter schools to vouchers—is supported
by a movement concerned with turning American education into a
profit-making sector of the economy. His argument is well laid
out for the reader. He supports it with a three-prong approach.
First, he demonstrates that dire education statistics, which
appear in public reports and the media, often represent analyses
performed by those with an interest in undermining the status quo
in education. Analyses are skewed to make American education
look abysmal. Second, he shows that the commercially interested
enemies of current education stand to gain in making a variety of
choice programs available to American parents and students.
Finally, he provides evidence that existing school choice
programs offer little evidence that choice is likely to improve
American education. Hence, claims of education privatizers that
they are motivated by an interest in helping educate young
Americans are suspect.
The State of American Education
Bracey asserts that the media present an abysmal review of the
state of American education to a public preferring bad news. The
voice that might assert the relative health of the current system
is mute, in part because no one wants to hear it and in part
because there is no one who has an interest in advancing it. Why
say education is good if you want more money for it or would like
to radically change education policy? Why say anything at all if
you approve of the status quo? Once the system comes under
attack from the outside, supportive insiders appear merely
defensive. Hence, the media and those who want to change
education both benefit from bashing the current system.
Bracey looks at The International Mathematics and Science
Study (TIMSS) which have been used by detractors of American
education to demonstrate that students in the U.S. are behind
their peers in other countries. For example, he argues that
while "Hey We're Number 19" (John Leo U.S.
News and World Report, 1998, March 19, p.14) and similar
headlines sound alarming, they mean little, in part because the
difference between numbers of correct answers on the study are
small between countries and there are many ties. For example,
U.S. students averaged 58 correct answers in the TIMSS middle
school science test which put us in a tie for 19th place with
Russia, New Zealand, Norway, Hong Kong, and Germany. With one
more question correct, we would have tied with Canada, Ireland
Sweden, and Australia (all ranked in 14th place). One
less correct answer and the U.S. would have been tied with the
countries ranked 23rd (Thailand, Israel, Switzerland
and Spain) (p. 49). In fact, U.S. students averaged 12 fewer
correct answers than students in top ranked Singapore but 31 more
correct answers than bottom ranked South Africa. He similarly
unveils the small differences in other TIMSS tests and in SAT
scores over time. His conclusion is that the enemies of the
current system are spinning test results to give the appearance
that American students are underachieving.
Others have interpreted the fact that American students do
worse in science and math at the eighth grade level than at the
fourth in international comparisons as largely a result of the
fact that curriculum in the United States tends to be broad
rather than deep. We try to teach more skills to children each
year and thus have less time to go in depth in areas covered by
the international tests (Schmidt et al.). Bracey refers to this
when he discusses the fact that American school children are
burdened with too much content (pp.45-46).
Bracey also argues that American middle schools tend to treat
the years between fifth and eighth grades as the end of primary
education. In many countries, children in the equivalent age
ranges are beginning secondary school. For this reason American
students are reviewing primary school math and science at the
time that their peers in other countries are being introduced to
secondary school material. In short, it is to be expected that
American children would see a drop in their test scores relative
to the children in other countries who are introduced to algebra
and geometry earlier (pp. 47-48). Further, these data cannot be
used to predict relative rankings at the end of high school as
Moe and Bailey have reportedly done (p. 12).
Who are the Enemies of American Education?
Bracey suggests that there are a variety of seemingly
disconnected interests that come together around public school
issues. Conservative foundations, academics, business and
industry, Christian conservatives, and state politicians all have
reasons to bash the status quo in American education. Bracey
sees these mostly unrelated interests as working in support of
one another, perhaps informally, both in creating fears about the
state of education and in promoting school choice.
Fiscal conservatives are interested in cutting the size of
government and reducing taxes. According to Bracey, education is
just one more activity of government that fiscal conservatives
would have shrink. Introducing competition among schools and
diminishing the role government plays in education both shrinks
government and taxes and opens the way for profit making in
education. I was startled to read his report that Lehman
Brothers sent out a brochure claiming that, like health care and
the prison system, privatizers are poised to take over the
education system and make money. (pp.6-7) Here Bracey points out
that whether choice means private schools or charter schools, it
can be a source of profit. Most charter schools that survive
beyond a school year are professionally managed by one of a few
for-profit educational management companies (p. 72). Such
companies have attracted the favorable attention of Wall Street
analysts whose belief in this sector's eventual profitability has
allowed it to grow, increasing the size and number of contracts
as more capital is raised from investors. Bracey laments that
Wall Street's faith is grounded in the sector's profit
making capacity, completely ignoring the radical shift in
education that privatization represents (p. 108).
For academics, studying education is a source of funding.
However, research grants are not generally given to people who
are hypothesizing that the status quo is rosy. Hence, faculty
members who need to obtain research grants in order to keep their
jobs, are best able to benefit from proposals to study reforms in
education. To study reform presupposes that reform is necessary
(p. 56).
Business and industry have long benefited from convincing
government to subsidize training of the future workforce. By
turning out young people who are prepared to work in America's
factories and offices, the government reduces industry's
cost of training. Changes in the economy and the mission of
industry lead to demand for change in the school system. Hence,
the rapid computerization of the American economy has led to a
demand for computer literate high school graduates. As Bracey
points out, few jobs require computer literacy beyond the ability
to operate a user-friendly software package. Of the ten fastest
growing professions in the U.S., five require real knowledge of
computing. All five are fast growing because the percentage of
people employed in them is rising rapidly from a very small
base. However, if we look at the change in absolute numbers of
employees, only one occupation requiring such knowledge is in the
top ten. Thus, Bracey argues, the threat to the economy
supposedly engendered by not having a computer literate
population is largely a manufactured fiction(pp. 10-11).
Christian conservatives are interested in using taxpayer money
to fund religious education. Hence, they are supporters of
vouchers, which would allow parents to use public funds to send
their children to parochial schools (pp. 11-12). The fact that
the Supreme Court recently decided that vouchers given to parents
to be spent in religious schools in Cleveland are not a violation
of the First Amendment (June 28, 2002, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris),
makes Bracey's discussion of the motivations and political
techniques of this interest group most timely.
While others see the school choice movement as a nascent
interest in American politics (Morken and Formicola, for
example), by understanding choice broadly to include vouchers,
charters, magnets, and home schooling, Bracey is convincing in
his assertion that there is a large, and politically active,
undercurrent in favor of this movement. By making connections
between the various, seemingly unrelated interests that support
the movement, he provokes serious reflection. It is startling to
learn that social/religious conservative William Bennet (former
Education Secretary) used statistics derived by the fiscally
conservative political scientist Terry Moe for a book on
investing in the education industry (p. 12). This seems to be
indicative of the value of overlapping interests that Bracey
suggests further the school choice movement.
Bracey is steadfastly opposed to the privatization of the
American education system in all of its guises. He sees it as a
threat to accountability in a government funded area, a misguided
effort as private schools tend to benefit from being able to
jettison their least successful students, and an inappropriate
area for profit-making. He argues that the supposed successes of
private schools are both overstated and not indicative of what
would happen if education were privatized more broadly.
The book is a compelling read. The author effectively
undermines the presentation of the statistics used to demonstrate
the failure of America's public schools. One is left with the
impression that rather than privatize, a system that works for
most kids should be left in place while more money is infused
into the education of children in poorly performing schools.
Bracey uses amusing anecdotes, such as the rush to blame
American science education when the Russian space program
embarrassed the U.S. with Sputnik, but the failure to credit it
with such obvious American science successes as the moon landing.
Similarly, education was blamed for the United States'
perceived lack of competitiveness when the Japanese economy
appeared strong in the 1980s but not for the rise in American
success when the Japanese economy suffered in the 1990s (pp.
38-40). He also places his argument in an historical context,
which undermines his opponents' ability to use a story of
decline to trounce American schools by exposing flaws in the
reporting of the alleged decrease in SAT scores (pp. 57-61) and
the development of a factory model of education at the turn of
the last century (pp. 35-36).
Case studies from Chile, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and San Antonio
allow his readers to see the mixed results of choice in a
qualitative way. Bracey asserts that none of these models have
produced real improvements in the education of children.
Overall, Bracey makes a convincing argument that school choice
should be viewed as a conspiracy that endangers a largely
successful system in order to obtain the varied goals of its
proponents. However, his occasional use of such qualifiers as
"apparently" or "rumored" leaves him vulnerable to criticism.
His use of unsubstantiated statements appears to be rooted in a
desire to make his depiction of the school choice movement as
alarming as possible. For example, he tells his readers that
"Lehman Brothers reportedly sent brochures to their
clients..." (p. 6). As his methodology is sound and
he is critical of the school choice movement for the use of
skewed statistics and innuendo, his own work would have been more
difficult to challenge if he had either checked his stories until
he was confident enough to state them as fact, or omitted the
unsubstantiated stories regardless of their rhetorical
value.
Some of his arguments are specious. While it is true that
most jobs will not require advanced computer knowledge in the
near future and, further, that expecting schools to provide it
would benefit industry, it is also true that in order to have a
competitive chance at many of society's higher paying jobs
students would benefit from such training. The recent New York
Appeals Court ruling that the state is only required to provide a
basic education for the purposes of citizenship participation not
withstanding, there is a broad societal expectation that young
people should be well prepared for the job market.
I used this book in an education policy class for juniors and
seniors. The students who read it, learned a lot about the use
of rhetoric and statistics as well as school privatization. The
book is convincing enough that I found it necessary to include a
more pro-school choice book lest unsophisticated readers be too
easily convinced.
The War Against America's Public Schools: Privatizing
Schools, Commercializing Education is a nice contribution to
research on school choice. In a concise book, the author is able
to link together various forms of choice and their proponents and
to offer a critical examination of them individual and
severally. It is a solid addition to a library on education
policy.
References
Schmidt, W., Houang, R., and Cogan, L. (Summer, 2002). A
coherent curriculum: The case of mathematics, The American
Educator.
Morken, H. and Jo Renee Formicola, J. R. (1999). The
Politics of School Choice. New York: Rowan & Littlefield
Publishers Inc.
About the Reviewer
Mary P. McGuire
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
State University of New York, Cortland
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