Run Schools like Business? Okay. You’re Fired.

I’ve never done this before, but I think I’ll make my first blog post that doesn’t explicitly mention Christianity.

Full disclosure: I’m a public school teacher.  Now, let’s proceed.

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I’ve just read another article on how education systems would operate better if they were run like corporations.  “Run school like a business!” has become a knee-jerk rallying cry for reform, and while I know that everything – schools, government, businesses, and American home life – could use plenty of reform, I tire of those who have no idea what they’re saying when they demand schools run like “businesses.”

Listen up, society: I will not run my classroom like a business.  I will not treat your children like products on an assembly line, because I refuse to reject and scrap the ones who are below my standards.  Nor will I treat your children like customers, because I won’t turn away and refuse to do business with the ones I sense are unprofitable to my enterprise.

So feel free to thank me for not running my classroom like a business.  If I did, you might not like the consequences, depending on which business model I chose to emulate:

• If I ran my classroom like a manufacturing business, I could demand that the more hazardous of your students be delivered to me with detailed Material Safety Data Sheets.
• If I ran my classroom like an assembly plant, my procurement department would have a list of qualified preferred-vendor parents who would send us only the top quality raw materials for the construction of our products.  Your child might not make that list.
• If I ran my classroom like a luxury car dealership, I could watch you pull up in your 1998 clunker and determine from your clothes, style of speech, and demeanor that I shouldn’t waste too much time making you one of my preferred customers.
• If I ran my classroom like an automotive manufacturer, I might issue recalls to have you take your student back to a lower grade for retrofitting.
• If I ran my classroom like General Electric or Exxon, I’d pay absolutely no federal taxes at the end of my very profitable year of teaching.  In fact, I’d get federal subsidies on top of my untaxed profits.
• If I ran my classroom like Microsoft, I would stop supporting your student’s knowledge upgrades once I’d found a younger, more promising student to release to the world.
• If I ran my classroom like a Donald Trump business, I could fail to improve your children, then file for bankruptcy protection against any claims you might have on me, and then start all over again with a clean slate and no penalties.  In fact, as a Trump business, I could do that twice a decade.
• If I ran my school like a recession-proof, lean, efficient business, I would focus on core competencies and cut all frills.  By “frills,” you think I mean music and art.  But I don’t.  I mean football, basketball, cheerleading, and all other non-core sports nonsense.
• If I ran my school like a multinational corporation, I would stop working with American children and instead outsource to Asia, where the children are raised to be more compliant, making fewer demands on my limited resources.
• If I ran my classroom like a customer service call line business, instead of contacting your home with my praise or concerns about your child, I would have you contact my call center in India.  They’d read you pre-prepared trouble shooting scripts on how to ensure your student is operating effectively.
• If I ran my school like an insurance company, I would not accept your students with preexisting conditions.  If you tried to force me to, I'd run to the Supreme Court to see if they'd have my back against you, and whine a lot if they didn't.
• If I ran my classroom as a bank runs its loan business, I would ensure that those students who come to me with a lot of ability receive a lot of my investment.  To those with lower ability ratings to their credit, I would give far less.  Perhaps I would even turn them away.

Those who demand schools run like businesses may know even less about business than they do about schooling.  But many of them don’t care.  What many of them are really saying is, “I want a school that runs without tax dollars, where teachers can be fired without cause, where salaries hover barely above minimum wage, and where only what I think is important is allowed to be taught!”

But what do you do, dear customer, the day those schools look at your student and say, “He does not meet our standards, and we don’t want him here”?  What do you do the day they say, “This just isn’t a good fit for us”?

I’ll tell you what you do.  You come to me.  And I will welcome your student with open arms and find a way to work with rejected raw materials.  I will reach into my pocket and finance the pens and notebooks and folders and texts you and your community can’t afford.  I’ll stay up late at night to think up better ways to get an education into his head.  I’ll differentiate.  I’ll customize.  I’ll find a way not to reject him as scrap.

Because I do not run my classroom like a business.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx