Privatization in Practice: A Case Study of a Large Urban School District

• In Event: 65.039 - Understanding Education Privatization and Marketization in Canada, Iceland, Switzerland, and the United States

Abstract

In this paper I adopt a more sensitized reading of ‘privatization’ to examine recent policies and programs that have emerged in K-12 public education in Vancouver, British Columbia (B.C.). Privatization has garnered much attention in education research with many scholars arguing that basic determinants for distinguishing public from private – ownership, governance, and provision – are no longer sufficient for understanding the climate in which public education is being delivered (Ball, 2009; Burch, 2009; Lubienski, 2006). Vancouver, a large urban school district, has seen a number of new initiatives implemented that do not fit the classic criteria for privatization, but have nonetheless brought about subtle shifts in how public education is being imagined and delivered.

For this study I draw from Lubienski’s (2006) work, and also from that of Ball and Youdell (2008), Levin (2001), and Scott and DiMartino (2009), to expand our thinking around privatization with the additional considerations of education finance, benefit, control (in terms of informal governance), and operating environment. These aspects present challenges in terms of ‘measurability’ – an issue that may explain why they have not factored more prominently in public and policy discussions; however, they are crucial in fully understanding the range of impacts that play out for stakeholder groups in public education (e.g., administrators, teachers, students and their families, and the broader public).

In examining privatization in the Vancouver school district, I employ a case study approach triangulating data drawn from provincial and district policy documents, statistical reports and press releases, previous scholarly research, as well as print and electronic media. My analysis is informed by the expanded privatization framework discussed above, aiming toward a comprehensive description of the current climate in one large, urban, public school district.

Preliminary findings suggest a number of policy and program reforms now playing out in Vancouver can be read as forms of privatization. Examples include the recruitment of fee-paying international students into K-12 public schools, an increase in education philanthropy, and the expansion of school choice programs. For the most part, these initiatives constitute no change in ownership, provision, or governance. However, they do impact public education finance, introducing a private revenue-generating component, and benefit, carving what is basically a new, non-resident constituency in the public system and creating further stratification among resident students. Furthermore, the environment in which public education is being regulated and delivered in Vancouver, and in the province of B.C. more broadly, appears to be increasingly privatized.

This study makes a theoretical contribution toward a broader, more sensitized understanding of privatization – one that engages some of the more subtle ways in which public education is shifting toward a ‘private good’. More concretely, it illuminates a context in which privatization of public education has received little attention, but where it is now ‘creeping’ (Fallon & Poole, 2013) into new corners of the system, for the most part out of view of the general public.
 

Author

• Dwayne Cover, University of British Columbia