Jeff Johnson is confusing innovation with privatization

On Alberta Prime Time, Alberta's Education Minister Jeff Johnson was asked to respond to the Parkland Institutes recent research on for-profit Cyber Charter Schools in K-12 education:

"One of the reasons Alberta has one of the best education systems in the world is that there is a choice of different types of schools and programs in which students can enroll... I'm open to options that create excellent learning opportunities for our kids."

As a parent, teacher and Albertan, I object to Johnson's response in four ways:

1. This is not a thoughtful response at all -- this is a shrug. This is indifference towards privatizing public education. Albertans should be immensely proud of our world-class public education system -- simultaneously, Albertans should be appalled when our elected officials consider for-profit, private schools as a way of improving our education system. I've written a post here about why Cyber Charter schools are such a bad idea. It's one thing to suggest that students should be encouraged to become entrepreneurial but it is quite another to unleash entrepreneurs to profit off of children and public education. To be clear, this is not about pedagogy -- it's about privatizing public education which is ultimately wrong.

2. I am in my fourth year of teaching in a children's inpatient psychiatric assessment unit in a hospital. I work with children that present with a variety of different mental health problems -- while some do well in school, many do not. I fear that too many of these children may be seen as candidates for cyber school. Too many of the children I work with already isolate themselves and cyber schools double-down on an already failed strategy.

3. While it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that choice via privatization undermines education equity and excellence, this is precisely what the research has been showing us. The assault on public education is not just an agenda pursued by Americans; Alberta would be wise to see American education reform and privatization as a cautionary tale and a model for how not to improve our schools. Johnson's use of school choice reflects a neo-liberal agenda that confuses public education as a private interest -- when in reality it is a public good. For a brilliant take down of the hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to our public schools, check out Diane Ravitch's latest book Reign of Error where she has an entire chapter on the folly of cyber schools.

4. Being open-minded is one thing but Johnson's response is growing old and tired. Every time someone asks him about a potential idea in education, regardless of its quality, he fires back with this hollow political boilerplate. Inspiring Education is a wonderful initiative that Johnson's predecessor Dave Hancock had the foresight and wisdom to start. However, Inspiring Education is not a blank cheque for the Alberta Government to do whatever they want.  Phil McRae from the Alberta Teachers' Association may have said it best on Alberta Prime Time, "What Albertans should be concerned about when I hear [Jeff Johnson's statement] is that when the minister speaks about innovation, he is actually speaking about privatization. These corporations exist essentially to extract a profit."

Inspiring Education was never about privatizing public education, so it's time for the Alberta Education and Jeff Johnson to stop confusing innovation with privatization.

Cyber Charter Schools: a wrecking ball for public education

Albertans place a premium on public education.

This is precisely why it is important for Alberta to see the United States and their education reforms as a cautionary tale and that the border offers zero insulation from policies that undermine and privatize public education.

This is why the Parkland Institute's most recent research Delivery Matters: Cyber Charter Schools and K-12 Education in Alberta is so important. I blog almost daily about how and why school needs to be a little less like school, and I am an advocate for substantial improvements to public education, teacher quality and equity.

However, I don't want my criticisms for school to come across like I don't like public education or that I want to destroy it. Unfortunately, too much of what is sold as education reform amounts to nothing more than a wrecking ball for public education which is precisely what Cyber Charters represent.

The report states:

While research on student outcomes remains preliminary, cyber charter schools have a patchy record, including significant risk of poorer education outcomes and very high rates of withdrawal. They also fail to address what the public school system has long taught as the skills of citizenship — how to get along with others, how to reason and deliberate, how to tolerate differences. From this perspective, cyber charter schools risk leaving large gaps in the education of young people. 

The US experience with cyber charter schools makes clear that the private delivery of public education is a risky path. There is little evidence to demonstrate that corporate interests add value in training the compassionate, skilled, and technically savvy citizens of the future. Instead, the cyber charter schools model encourages profiteering and mismanagement at public expense and at significant risk to students.

Alberta Teachers' Association Mark Ramsankar agrees with the report and states, "Cyber charter schools undermine the critical role of the student-teacher relationship in child development and socialization." 

In a statement, the Alberta Teachers' Association rightfully identifies that "the Parkland report demonstrates that the vision of Inspiring Education would be compromised by introducing cyber charter schools, where students rarely hear from their teachers and only occasionally interact face-to-face."

In her best-selling book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, Diane Ravitch dedicates an entire chapter on busting the myth that "virtual schools will bring the promise of personalized, customised learning to every student and usher in an age of educational excellence for all." Ravitch begins her chapter by rightfully outlining, however briefly, the promise of technology, but then warns:

Yet with all its great potential, technology can never substitute for inspired teaching. Students will respond with greater enthusiasm to a gifted teacher than to a computer with the world's best software. Electronic technology has its charms, but it can't compete with the lively interchange of ideas that happens when students discuss a book they read or a math problem they wrestled with or a play they saw or an unsolved mystery in history or the most recent elections. Ultimately, it is imagination, joy, and disciplined inquiry that makes education valuable, that distinguish real education from seat time, that constitute the difference between learning and a credential. 

Closer to home, the Alberta Teachers' Association's Phil McRae wrote a profound piece on the Rebirth of the Teaching Machine through the Seduction of Data Analytics where he outlines how the move to personalize learning with "any time, any place and any pace" is anything but new. His concluding paragraph speaks volumes:

Emerging technologies and smart data certainly have a place in educational transformation, but they must be employed to enhance what research in the learning sciences continues to reinforce as the foundation of learning: the pedagogical relationships between students, teachers, parents and community. Attempts to displace this human dimension of learning with the teaching machine (whatever you imagine this to be) is a distraction to the most important support great schools can offer students each and every day – relationships, relationships, relationships.