Teach For All, Public-Private Partnerships, and the Erosion of the Public in Education

• In Event: The Global Education Industry: Emerging Edu-Businesses and Education Markets

Abstract

This paper pursues the question of whether it is possible to have a public-private partnership in (teacher) education. In other words, if partnerships entail collaboration, a joint venture, and a confluence of mutual goals, are the fundamental assumptions of the public sector commensurable with those of the private actors? This piece explores these questions through a comparison between two organizations taking part in the broader umbrella of Teach For All: Enseñá por Argentina [Teach For Argentina] and Enseña Chile [Teach For Chile]. These two programs offer a fascinating contrast; while the Argentine state has denied Enseñá por Argentina’s corps members any privileged entrance to public schools arguing that they are not certified teachers, the Chilean state has actively partnered with Enseña Chile, allowing the program to grow at a fast pace since their inauguration in 2008. After a brief introduction of the Teach For All network, the paper delves into a comparison between Argentina and Chile, two countries that present very different state configurations, histories, and socio-political idiosyncrasies, and with them, diverging understandings of the nature of public education and its relation to the market forces. The comparison is framed by Jacques Rancière’s (1999, 2001, 2004) understandings of democracy, the public, and dissensus. Ranciere invites us to consider democracy not as a system of governance, but as a disruption and reconfiguration of the given order in the name of equality. While these scenes of dissensus may be staged by any one, anywhere, this paper understands the public sphere as a privileged setting in its openness towards the interrogation of who has a right to be heard and be considered part of the commons. The paper uses the scarce literature on the Teach For All model as a foundation, as well as publicly available documents and data about the programs and about each country’s school system and teaching force in order to describe and contrast them. Yet this is mainly a theoretical essay that explores how different socio-historical understandings of the role of the state play end up opening or closing opportunities for education to become truly democratic.

The presentation concludes by exposing the Chilean “audit state” (Ranson, 2003) as an ideal partner for the private sector to engage in teacher education, while the Argnetine state, in all its contradictions and complexities, presents a much more difficult terrain for the private sector to navigate. Both situations have benefits and costs. But whereas the neoliberal common sense would point to the economic cost of a state assuming responsibility for educating its teachers, a different understanding of the notion of responsibility may lead us to consider such costs as necessary in the struggle for democracy.

The significance of the work lies in generating a counter-discourse to the common sense governing the participation of the private sector in education, by exploring the consequences of different state configurations on the nature of teaching, learning, and curriculum.

Author

• Daniel Friedrich, Teachers College, Columbia University