Public Education is Not Enough!

We also need public busing and public cafeterias. God forbid someone makes a profit from feeding schoolchildren!

From busing children to school to making their lunchtime meals, private companies are increasingly performing work traditionally done by school district employees, a National Education Association official said in Cheyenne on Wednesday.

If not reversed, that trend has the potential to seriously damage the country's public education system, said NEA Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen.

…

She said there are political leaders in this country who seem to despise anything with the word "public" in its title while deeming anything "private" to be good and efficient.

Apparently, there are also political leaders in this country who seem to despise anything private and efficient while deeming anything public to be good.

UPDATE: Oops! As the comment from Evan points out, I forgot to include the link. Here it is.

Comments

[Jason Ligon]

I think the specific point is that the same people who complain that police enforced public monopolies are good love to whine about the inefficiencies of private 'monopolies' which are much weaker.

joe:

Did you not read the quotation Hanah provided immediately above the line you referenced? I guess public educators are excused from 'do unto others' on establishment clause grounds?

[Mark Fox]

joe: Are you going to defend the state on this topic, or merely wag your keyboard at those who catalog its shortcomings? You've got the link. Please tell us how to increase regulation in order to achieve your preferred outcome.

[Skip Oliva]

For the past year, John Ashcroft's Justice Dept. has been in court trying to force the DFA dairy cooperative to undo its prior acquisitions of some local dairy farms in Kentucky. The reason? The merger "eliminated competition" for school milk contracts in several Kentucky public school districts. The DOJ has been whining incessantly about the "threat" of increased prices as a result of the "school milk monopoly." Apparently nobody at the DOJ can recognize the public school monopoly for what it is.

[Jeff]

I have zero respect for "businesses" whose primary purpose is to "serve" the state. They are - by extention - nothing more than parasites feeding on a larger parasite.

Face it - It's nothing more than Business Workfare and it sucks.

[Swamp Justice]

Jeff, you are making the same mistaken assumption that Eskelsen made: that the public monopoly will be replaced by a private monopoly. There will be many private companies competing to provide these school services. At least when there are multiple parasites, the most efficient and cost-effective parasite is most likely to prevail. 🙂

[thoreau]

If the bidding is transparent and competitive, if the quality of service is monitored, and if the transaction costs for switching contractors are low, then I don't object to contracting out some portion of a government project. (Yes, yes, I might object to the existence of the project in the first place, but as long as it's there it might as well be done more cheaply and efficiently.)

However, as I have often pointed out from my own summer interning at a federal research lab run by a "private contractor", not every "private contractor" is really bringing to bear the benefits of market forces. Sometimes they are surrogate government agencies, adding extra layers of bureaucracy (an extra layer of private sector managers to interface with the gov't, and an extra layer of gov't officials to deal with the contractor).

Is that the case in school services? Hopefully not. But don't let your eyes glaze over automatically when somebody mentions "private contractors."

[Evan Williams]

Yes, Jeff, the optimal outcome is the complete abolition of the public adolescent internment camps. But until that great day comes, the next best thing is to open up the services of the school to private sector competition. Either way, the state will continue to run its mandatory internment camps. So, given that option A, which is the abolition of the camps, is probably not gonna happen tomorrow, you're left with options B: maintain the government monopoly on the school services, or C: allow the private sector to compete. Which would YOU choose, B or C?

The only argument I can see for option B is the "starve the beast" analogy.

[Phil]

As per joe's command, I examined Ms. Eskelsen's "argument," such as it is, and found it wanting. For one thing, it's based on the "if current trends continue" fallacy, which assumes that, because schools are privatizing certain non-educational functions (busing, food service) -- which may be intended to lower costs so they can pay teachers more -- they intend to also privatize the educational function.

Even if this is the case, she also assumes that this is ipso facto a bad thing. Because heaven knows there are no successful, quality private schools around. No sir.

And, like so many whose subsistence depends on sucking the taxpayers' teats, she doesn't understand market forces: For example, she said, a private company running a school might conclude that it is not very cost-effective to teach special education students, or to teach English as a foreign language.

As a logical consequence of profit motive, special education or non-English-speaking students could get left behind in a privatized educational system, Eskelsen said.

If I lived in a community in which the educational system had been completely privatized, and it seemed that handicapped or ESL students were not getting a good education, you know what I would do. Start a competing for-profit school that served exactly those markets.

Seriously, Ms.Eskelsen's "argument" is nothing more than scare-mongering and hand-waving. There's no substance behind it, just sloganeering: "We believe public dollars should be devoted to those institutions that have public accountability." Like now? When the schools appear to be accountable to nobody but the unions and bureaucrats? They certainly aren't accountable to students, or parents, that's for damned sure.

She's on firmer ground with NCLB, but by conflating that with the other issue, she defeats her own argument.

[Lisa Simpson]

Thoreau, those extra layers of interfacing bureaucracy you mention sound like a well-known recent movie. "Look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"

[Luisa]

OK folks, let's look past the ideological blinders on this one. I'm There is good reason why it must be public institutions, accountable to parents feeding our kids at school, not corporations.

Feeding our kids processed food with low nutritional value, lots of government-subsidized sugar, and laden with pesticides whose costs are externalized to the public, rather than into the price of products, all will maximize profits for the food service company.

This is all fine if it were adults buying and eating the food and I'd have no objection, but that's not the case. Our kids won't know or care and it would take huge amounts of time and energy for parents to learn what's in the food. Our best hope 9no guarantee by any means) for our kids eating healthy is to have public servants operating under control of a school board.

[Russ D]

"If the bidding is transparent and competitive, if the quality of service is monitored, and if the transaction costs for switching contractors are low, then I don't object to contracting out some portion of a government project."

Schools don't do that with the teachers, and the NEA doesn't want them to start!

[JDM]

"Our best hope (no guarantee by any means) for our kids eating healthy is to have public servants operating under control of a school board."

Wow.

[joe]

"I examined Ms. Eskelsen's "argument," such as it is, and found it wanting."

Personally, I found the link wanting. It's pretty tough to figure out from the sketchy reporting provided whether she said anything worthwhile or not.

[Phil]

Also, the bricks that made the school were manufactured by a private brick company, rather than by the state. The chalkboards were made by private companies. The gym equipment was made by private companies. The pencils, erasers, paper and desks were made by private companies. The textbooks were purchased from a private company.

And even if they hired state employees to cook the food, it was grown by private farmers, and packaged by private companies.

Why must the service "cooking food for children" be public, but not the service "building desks for children"?

Ms. Eskelsen's argument, carried to its conclusion, seems like an argument for outright Marxism.

[Dan]

Nice elipses, Hanah. And I love the no link. Should we examine Ms. Eskelsen's argument, and think about it? Nah, let's just assume it's meritless

After reading the linked article, I'd have to say that Ms. Eskelsen's complaint sounded more reasonable *before* I was able to read it. In the summary, Eskelsen comes across as concerned about the private sector. In the actual article, she comes across as completely ignorant about the private sector.

For example, check this out:

a private company running a school might conclude that it is not very cost-effective to teach special education students, or to teach English as a foreign language.

Imagine if someone argued that house painters should be government employees, because otherwise they might just decide they didn't want to paint ALL of your house.

If you contract with a company to run a school for you, and you want them teaching special ed or English as a foreign language, you put it in the contract that they have to. It's that simple. If no companies *want* to teach special ed, and you therefore can't find one you can hire to teach it, then the public schools get to teach it instead. Which, presumably, would make Eskelsen happy.

[Hanah Metchis]

This is all fine if it were adults buying and eating the food and I'd have no objection, but that's not the case. Our kids won't know or care and it would take huge amounts of time and energy for parents to learn what's in the food.

Really? You think parents care more about what they eat themselves than about what their kids eat?

Our best hope 9no guarantee by any means) for our kids eating healthy is to have public servants operating under control of a school board.

Yeah, because parents are completely incompetent to pack a healthy lunch for their own kids if they don't like what the cafeteria - private or public - is serving.

[s.m. koppelman]

When the private solution costs parents and taxpayers in general more and the bus drivers, foodservice workers, custodians, etc. are paid less for the same quality of service, maybe private solutions aren't an universally superior approach.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with Marriott providing school lunches and making a profit, but I'd rather see lunches of comparable nutritive quality provided at the same cost and see the "profit" put back into things like subsidized meals for poor kids and things like a living wage and pensions for the cafeteria workers.

[Dan]

OK folks, let's look past the ideological blinders on this one. There is good reason why it must be public institutions, accountable to parents feeding our kids at school, not corporations.

Public schools are not accountable to parents.

Public cafeteria workers answer to the superintendent, who answers to the school board, which answers to the voters.

Private cafeteria workers answer to their company, which answers to the school board, which answers to the voters. Privatizing schools doesn't reduce accountability; the people serving food to kids are equally unaccountable either way.

Feeding our kids processed food with low nutritional value, lots of government-subsidized sugar, and laden with pesticides whose costs are externalized to the public, rather than into the price of products, all will maximize profits for the food service company.

That's your idea of "looking past the ideological blinders"? Heh!

[Russ D]

koppelman,

Where are you getting "the" private solution? Snce when is there only one?

[speedwell]

When I was in high school in new Jersey, we did not have a cafeteria that made our lunches. They were contracted out to the lowest bidder. Guess who the lowest bidder was? The local Army base. How's that for irony?

Oh, the food was no better than you'd expect. I preferred to buy two blueberry Dannon yogurts every day. And since I was required by school rules to buy milk, I also had one of those.

Moo.

[E. Steven]

For what it's worth I went to a private school and the lunches were so bad I stopped eating them from 10th grade on. I also went to a private college and the meals weren't any better. No matter who cooks it, institutional food isn't very good.

Oh, EXCEPT. We would have this one week every year where some folks who rated East Coast private schools would come and you should have seen the spread they laid out in the cafeteria. It was like, chilled crab salad for everybody!

[thoreau]

No matter who cooks it, institutional food isn't very good.

I worked in the kitchen of a privately-owned hospital for a year, and I concur 100%!!!!

[Jennifer]

Just wanted to say that not teaching special ed would be a step in the right direction. When I taught high school my classroom was two floors directly above the basement room where the hard-core special ed kids were kept. This one girl (I think) was so severely retarded she was non-verbal, had to wear helmets and knee and elbow pads, and didn't even know how to close her lips so as to avoid saliva bubbles oozing out of her mouth. And, judging by the number of teachers and special workers who tended solely to her, I'd say the cost of "educating" her was likely more than double my salary.

Here's an idea: rather than have the state waste money trying to educate the uneducable, why not put just half of that money into an irrevocable trust fund, so that the interest can pay for that microcephalic child to be cared for throughout her life, and then when she dies, revert the money back to the state?

I don't even want to know what this severely brain-damaged child was doing in high school in the first place.

[b-psycho]

Feeding our kids processed food with low nutritional value, lots of government-subsidized sugar, and laden with pesticides...

You mean like now?

After all, it is the government that defined ketchup as a vegetable for nutritional purposes and said frozen french fries were "fresh". The best arguement for privatizing the mess has always been merely observing the current system at work and counting the numerous instances where Uncle Sam, for lack of better term, fails to give a f__k. When the result is so consistently crap, you look for an alternative if you aren't insane.

[Old Salt]

I dunno. The quality of the food at my high school cafeteria took a nose dive when they privatized it. Same thing happened when I was in the Coast Guard: the base cafeteria used to serve really good chow; then it was outsourced to a private company and the chow became literally inedible. (Speaking of the Coast Guard, every once in a while some extreme libertarian suggests privatizing bouy-tending. What an absolute cluster fuck THAT would be! It would cost a fortune, and waterways in poor areas would go to rack and ruin.)

[Evan Williams]

Hey Hanah, do you have any more links or information on this? I would be very interested to hear why Eskelsen believes that this will "seriously damage" the country's public education system (not that that's a bad thing). If these companies are performing work traditionally done by school district employees, then that means that the local government can cut costs by cutting the number of employees it has. And who in god's name would argue against cutting superfluous costs? Should we continue to employ and pay these school district employees, simply so that they can keep their jobs? That makes no sense.

And let's also look at why these private companies are getting the contracts in the first place. I mean, I don't know of anyone who would rather hire an inefficient and costlier company than a more efficient, cheaper one. So, how did they get the job, unless they are more efficient and cheaper than the school district employees? Does Ms. Eskelsen understand simple first-grade economics? If the school district employees are, in fact, better at the job, more efficient, and less expensive than the private firms, then yes, the schools should hire them. But somehow, I doubt that that is the case. Again, why would these private firms be hired, unless they were better for the job than the school employees?

God forbid we open the bussing and foodservice operations to the market, rather than allow the government to maintain a monopoly over it, which, given that there is no competition involved, inevitably means that either the kids get less, or the taxpayers pay more. Is that what Ms. Eskelsen is suggesting?

I'm all for public school employees getting a fair chance at working in the positions. Open the positions up to the free market, let them compete with private firms, and give no special treatment to either side. Treat them as yet another candidate for the job. And whoever can do it best for the least amount of money, gets the job. No favoritism, just market demand. That way, if you insist on robbing the citizens to pay for kids' lunches and transportation, at least we can sleep better know that you're getting the best people for the job.

[DaveInBigD]

Don't suppose we could get a link in there, could we? 😛

I don't want to start bagging on the NEA without reading the whole article. I might miss things to ridicule.

[joe]

Nice elipses, Hanah. And I love the no link. Should we examine Ms. Eskelsen's argument, and think about it? Nah, let's just assume it's meritless.

[Hanah Metchis]

Thanks for the benefit of your doubt, Joe. I put the link in as soon as Evan pointed out that I forgot it.

[joe]

After summing up Ms. Eskelson's position with "Apparently, there are also political leaders in this country who seem to despise anything private and efficient while deeming anything public to be good.," you're going to wag your finger about "benefit of the doubt?"

Do unto others...

[thoreau]

Oh, the best reason to hire private contractors is, if they don't perform, you can fire them fairly efficiently.

That's 100% true of somebody working for Contractor Corp. If Bob from Contractor Corp screws up he can be fired.

It isn't always true of Contractor Corp itself. Depending on how thick the layers of bureaucracy are and how entrenched the contractor is (and how many elected officials he's paying off), switching contractors might be a difficult task. For instance, you can't just take a major research facility and hand it over to a brand-new conctractor tomorrow. On the other hand, you can swap out a crew of janitors far more efficiently.

I suspect that getting rid of lunch contractors is fairly easy, but even then the devil may be lurking in details over subcontracts with food wholesalers and whatnot.

My point is just that privatization is not always a panacea if the government remains involved. Handing a function over to the private sector will produce a private-sector outcome with all of its advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand, keeping the government in charge but letting a private contractor do it at public expense and according to government rules is a stickier situation. It might produce a more stream-lined operation, or it might give us all the intelligence and efficiency of the Pentagon purchasing office that spent $500 on a hammer from a private contractor.

[Kevin Carson]

Evan Williams,

You're overlooking the fact that the people awarding the contract are not spending their own money, so normal market incentives don't apply. The reasons a government might award a contract to a firm on grounds other than efficiency and cost, all boil down to that firm's influence on the government, and its desire to profit through its government connections. At the local level, that might mean the school lunch contractor's Cousin Billy Ray Bob is on the school board. Multiply it by ten thousand and you've got Boeing or McDonnell-Douglass

[Pavel]

My point is just that privatization is not always a panacea if the government remains involved.

thoreau:

Your posts in this thread took the words right out of my mouth (er...fingers?).

The public/private debate--in this case as in so many others--is a lot of smoke and mirrors obscuring the bedeviled details. "Privatizing" does not automatically mean increase in productivity, transparency and choice. An entrenched private bureaucracy can be just as maddeningly wasteful. The question has to be asked on a case by case basis: Qui bono?

[Phil]

After all, it is the government that defined ketchup as a vegetable for nutritional purposes and said frozen french fries were "fresh".

To be fair, the first of those two things never actually happened, and the second applies only in terms of commerce and trade, not for nutritional purposes or anything like that.

[b-psycho]

Phil: It didn't? Was it reversed at the last minute?

BTW: old salt, I was more generally talking about the schools themselves. At the least, they shouldn't be tied to the federal level.

[rst]

Eskelsen doesn't make a good argument...

"We think there are certain things that are public services that shouldn't be at the mercy of CEO stock options,"

Stock options are incentives that do not drive business decisions.

"We don't pick and chose the students we want the way private schools can."

She's right on that one. The public school system doesn't leave out the bottom tier at home, it hauls them into school and promptly ignores them.

"We believe public dollars should be devoted to those institutions that have public accountability,"

Were there accountability of any kind in the public school system she'd have a point.

"a trend to privatize many industries, including utilities...Those kinds of things were kind of brushed off 10, 15 years ago as radical,"

So was gay marriage and saying "bitch" on television. Times change.

[JAG]

Funny, I grew up eating simple sandwiches, made by myself or my parents at lunch in the 70's. Played athletics year round. No problem. My kids, today, do the same. Worried about "nutrition" at lunch? Then take five minutes and make your kid cheap sandwich. Please.
Oh, the best reason to hire private contractors is, if they don't perform, you can fire them fairly efficiently. Try to get rid of a public employee sometime. Short of them committing a murder, you'll be lucky if you can do it in under a couple of years.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

My major concern is what this would mean for lunch-ladies and housewife school bus drivers. If this all goes private, will we have any more grouchy old ladies dishing out mashed "potatos" via the ice cream scoop, or fat bus-driver haus-fraus grinding the hell out of the gears? If not, then it would be a crime against the children.