Great Public Schools for Every Child
Privatization
In public schools today, little is safe from commercialization and privatization. A
wide variety of companies and corporations are attempting to take over virtually all
of the work traditionally performed by school district employees, from teaching to
providing student transportation to cooking meals to cleaning and maintaining
school buildings and grounds, and more.
The attempted corporate takeover of our system of education has its roots in
support services - it is in this area that private contractors have been around the
longest, and that contracting out is the most widely practiced. The National
Education Association is strongly opposed to privatization because of the threat
that it poses to the quality of education, the accountability of public schools to the
communities they serve, and to the well being of children in school.
Privatization in Education: What Is It?
The term "privatization" typically refers to shifting the delivery of services
performed by public employees to private businesses. This usually occurs in the
form of contracting out (also called "outsourcing"), whereby public organizations
enter into contracts with private companies for the delivery of services.
Unfortunately, some school districts have been contracting out various education
support services for decades. Many of the tasks they perform are often
erroneously viewed as "peripheral" services that are
"These forces, combined with support services contracting, amount to an
attempted private sector takeover of the entire system of public education."
detached from the rest of the system of education and thus easily separated from
"core" educational functions. There has been no shortage of private companies
actively seeking to perform education support functions, particularly in
transportation, maintenance, custodial, and food services. In colleges and
universities, the practice of contracting out is even more widespread. Despite all
this effort, privatization is still the exception rather than the rule, and that is
increasing slowly, if at all. Public education has seen a growth in private sector
involvement on several other fronts. One is the emergence of an "education
industry" composed of private companies that take over administrative and
teaching functions for entire schools or even school districts.
Another is the steady growth of corporate commercial activities within public
schools, including sales, advertising, and market research activities. The third is the
voucher movement, which threatens to drain resources from public schools to
subsidize private schools.
These forces, combined with support services contracting, amount to an attempted
private sector takeover of the entire system of public education. If these forces
were allowed to continue unabated, one could imagine a system of public education
where nearly all administrative, teaching, support, and even cultural functions
would be controlled by private companies, reducing the role of elected school
boards to glorified contract administrators. Clearly, this prospect gives new and
deeper meaning to the term "privatization."
