Hidden Markets The New Education Privatization

1st Edition Patricia Burch pdf download

https://ebookname.com/product/hidden-markets-the-new-education-
privatization-1st-edition-patricia-burch/

Get the full ebook with Bonus Features for a Better Reading Experience on ebookname.com
Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Rediscover the hidden New Jersey Second Edition Roberts

https://ebookname.com/product/rediscover-the-hidden-new-jersey-
second-edition-roberts/

Laurel Burch Christmas A Color the Season Beautiful

with 25 Quilts Crafts 1st Edition Laurel Burch

https://ebookname.com/product/laurel-burch-christmas-a-color-the-
season-beautiful-with-25-quilts-crafts-1st-edition-laurel-burch/

Continuing Professional Education for the Information

Society Patricia Layzell Ward

https://ebookname.com/product/continuing-professional-education-
for-the-information-society-patricia-layzell-ward/

Management Accounting for Business 8E 8th Edition Colin

Drury

https://ebookname.com/product/management-accounting-for-
business-8e-8th-edition-colin-drury/
Attending Krishna s Image Chaitanya Vaishnava Murti
seva as Devotional Truth 1st Edition Kenneth Russell
Valpey

https://ebookname.com/product/attending-krishna-s-image-
chaitanya-vaishnava-murti-seva-as-devotional-truth-1st-edition-
kenneth-russell-valpey/

Gathering Moss A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

Robin Wall Kimmerer

https://ebookname.com/product/gathering-moss-a-natural-and-
cultural-history-of-mosses-robin-wall-kimmerer/

A Java Library of Graph Algorithms and Optimization 1st

Edition Hang T. Lau

https://ebookname.com/product/a-java-library-of-graph-algorithms-
and-optimization-1st-edition-hang-t-lau/

The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class 2nd Revised

edition Edition Kees Van Der Pijl

https://ebookname.com/product/the-making-of-an-atlantic-ruling-
class-2nd-revised-edition-edition-kees-van-der-pijl/

Mastering AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 James Wedding P.E.

https://ebookname.com/product/mastering-autocad-
civil-3d-2011-james-wedding-p-e/
Test Your English Vocabulary In Use Advanced South
Asian Edition Michael Mccarthy

https://ebookname.com/product/test-your-english-vocabulary-in-
use-advanced-south-asian-edition-michael-mccarthy/
Hidden Markets

The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the influence

of the private sector in all aspects of public education. Across the United
States, test publishers, software companies, virtual charter school operators,
and other industries are rapidly moving to take advantage of the significant
revenues made available by public education funds. As these private compa-
nies are garnering billions of dollars in public revenues they have assumed
a central place in the day-to-day governance and administration of public
schools—but, while drawing on public money and on the authority of public
policy, the work of the new privatization has been kept relatively hidden
from view.

Hidden Markets suggests that much more transparency is needed around

what exactly these firms are doing in our schools, the influence of the market
on their work, and the implications of these dynamics for the goals claimed
by federal policy designers. Drawing on analytic tools such as investigative
financial accounting, Patricia Burch maps the financial and operational
reach of some of the largest for-profit firms in the K–12 education industry,
offering a close look at how these activities are unfolding on the ground and
the roles being transferred from the public to the private sector. Ultimately,
Burch’s careful analysis demonstrates that only when we subject the education
industry and its strategies to systematic and in-depth critical examination
can we begin to demand more corporate accountability.

Patricia Burch is Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the

University of Wisconsin—Madison.
 The Critical Social Thought Series

Edited by Michael W. Apple,

University of Wisconsin—Madison
Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy High Stakes Education: Inequality,
with/in the Postmodern Globalization, and Urban School Reform
Patti Lather Pauline Lipman

Teacher Education and the Social Conditions of Learning to Labor in New Times
Schooling Nadine Dolby and Greg Dimitriadis, editors
Daniel P. Liston and Kenneth M. Zeichner
Working Method: Research and Social Justice
Race, Identity, and Representation in Education Lois Weis and Michelle Fine
Warren Crichlow and Cameron McCarthy,
editors Class Reunion: The Remaking of the American
White Working Class
Public Schools that Work: Creating Community Lois Weis
Gregory A. Smith, editor
Race, Identity, and Representation in Education,
Power and Method: Political Activism and Second Edition
Educational Research Cameron McCarthy, Warren Crichlow, Greg
Andrew Gitlin, editor Dimitriadis, and Nadine Dolby

Critical Ethnography in Educational Research: Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban

A Theoretical and Practical Guide Education, and a New Social Movement
Phil Francis Carspecken Jean Anyon

The Uses of Culture: Education and the Limits Could It Be Otherwise? Parents and the
of Ethnic Affiliation Inequities of Public School Choice
Cameron McCarthy Lois André-Bechely

Education, Power, and Personal Biography: Reading and Writing the World with
Dialogues with Critical Educators Mathematics
Carlos Alberto Torres, editor Eric Gustein

Contradictions of School Reform: Educational Market Movements: African American

Costs of Standardized Testing Involvement in School Voucher Reform
Linda M. McNeil Thomas C. Pedroni

Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of Rightist Multiculturalism: Core Lessons on

Adolescence Neoconservative School Reform
Nancy Lesko Kristen L. Buras

Tough Fronts: The Impact of Street Culture on Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the
Schooling Standardization of Inequality
L. Janelle Dance Wayne Au

Political Spectacle and the Fate of American Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contempo-
Schools rary Perspectives
Mary Lee Smith with Walter Heinecke, Linda Maisha T. Fisher
Miller-Kahn, and Patricia F. Jarvis
Hidden Markets: The New Education
Rethinking Scientific Literacy Privatization
Wolff-Michael Roth and Angela Calabrese Patricia Burch
Barton
Hidden Markets
The New Education Privatization

Patricia Burch
First published 2009
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Simultaneously published in the UK

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

© 2009 Routledge, Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permis-
sion in writing from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Burch, Patricia.
Hidden markets : the new education privatization / Patricia Burch.
p. cm. — (The critical social thought series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Privatization in education—United States. I. Title.
LB2806.36.B87 2009
379.1—dc22
2008029468

ISBN 0-203-88394-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0-415-95566-1 (hbk)

ISBN 10: 0-415-95567-X (pbk)
ISBN 10: 0-203-88394-2 (ebk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-95566-9 (hbk)

ISBN 10: 978-0-415-95567-6 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-88394-5 (ebk)
To my family:
For all of their love, support, and inspiration
 Contents

Series Editor’s Introduction to Hidden Markets ix

Acknowledgments xv

1 Trends and Origins 1

2 Inside the Market 21

3 Privatization and Its Intermediaries 39

4 Shadow Privatization: Local Experiences with Supplemental

Education Services 55

5 Invisible Influences: For-Profit Firms and Virtual

Charter Schools 77

6 In the Interstices: Benchmark Assessments, District

Contracts, and NCLB 99

7 Working for Transparency 119

Appendix A. Research Design and Methodology 137

Appendix B. New Privatization Trends and Questions Conjoined 149

Appendix C. Characteristic Companies 151

Notes 153
Bibliography 165
Index 177

vii
 Series Editor’s Introduction
to Hidden Markets

In an interesting quirk of fate, I am writing the Introduction to this fine

book in London, just a few days after I have had a meal at the Houses of
Parliament with a New Labour MP. She was thoughtful and articulate—and
deeply committed to expanding the role of the private sector in education
and in the entire public sector. The distinction between public and private
seemed not to be a major concern of hers. Efficiency and accountability were
her watchwords.
She is not alone either in England or in the United States. But should we be
concerned that so many people now feel this way? Should we be concerned
that a number of groups go even further, seeing “private” as necessarily good
and “public” as necessarily bad? With neoliberalism now driving a good
deal of policy in many parts of our economic and social worlds, there may
be reasons for worry.
For example, we are witnessing a situation where important parts of educa-
tion are being steadily, but radically, transformed. In many ways, education
is being commodified, turned into something that is bought and sold on
a market as if it was bread, cars, or plasma screen TVs. It is being treated
internally as a business and put on a market like other businesses.
As I show in Educating the “Right” Way,1 these things are part of a much
larger set of changes. It is not an easy process to transform parts of our lives
and institutions that were not totally integrated into market relations so that
they are part of a market. To do this, at least four significant things must be
worked on.2
1. The services or goods that are to be focused upon must be reconfigured
so that they can indeed be bought and sold.
2. People who received these things from the state must be convinced to
want to buy them.

ix
x • Series Editor’s Introduction to Hidden Markets

3. The working conditions and outlook of the employees who work in

this sector must be transformed from a model based on collective
understandings and providing service to “the public” on the one hand
to working to produce profits for owners and investors and subject to
market discipline on the other.
4. When business moves into what were previously non-market fields, as
much as possible their risks must be underwritten by the state.
I noted earlier that this is a world-wide phenomenon. As Stephen Ball
and Deborah Youdell have shown, in a considerable number of nations what
they call “hidden privatization” is occurring at an ever increasing rate.3 Ball
describes the policies that both lie behind these changes and that support
them as “policy technologies.” That is, they are sets of interrelated reforms that
provide new ways of thinking about education, new languages for describ-
ing what it does and does not do, new roles for the people who work in it or
use it, and new identities for the teachers, students, parents, and “managers”
involved in it. As he says,
Targets, accountability, competition and choice, leadership, entre-
preneurism, performance-related pay, and privatization articulate
new ways of thinking about what we do, what we value, and what our
purposes are. They work together to render education as like a “com-
modity” rather than a public good … They bring into play now roles
and relationships, those of client/consumer and competitor, manager/
managed, appraiser/inspector/monitor, and they exclude or margin-
alize previous roles, loyalties, and subjectivities. They change what is
important and valuable and necessary.4
With the focus on being “business-like” and on highly prescriptive systems
of accountability, schools are rated and compared. And this is done almost
totally in terms of testing. Each school and school district is under immense
pressure to carefully prepare its students for these tests. This is straightforward
enough and is seen throughout our nation and so many others. But because
of this situation, once more Ball’s worries are important here and give what
Burch has accomplished in this book even more salience. As Ball puts it,
But the question that is avoided here is whether these indicators actually
stand for and thus represent valid, worthwhile or meaningful outputs.
Does increased emphasis on preparation for the tests and the adaptation
of pedagogy and curriculum to the requirements of test performance
constitute worthwhile effects of “improvement”? In terms of economic
competitiveness, is what is measured here what is needed?5
These kinds of policies are perhaps best exemplified in No Child Left Be-
hind, and this is one of the reasons that Hidden Markets devotes a good deal
 Series Editor’s Introduction to Hidden Markets • xi

of its attention to its effects. But while No Child Left Behind provided the
context for the extension of these tendencies, at times making them manda-
tory, many of them were in existence before No Child Left Behind was put
into place. No Child Left Behind and the policies that both led to it and that
it has sponsored have their supporters, but they have also been subjected
to some very powerful empirical, political, and educational criticisms from
multiple groups.6 However, even if No Child Left Behind is substantially
changed and/or its policies and mandates made more flexible, there can be
little doubt that much that it signaled is now accepted as common-sense. The
private sector is now a very large player in education. Mandatory comparative
testing is now so institutionalized that it will be very difficult to remove. The
need to be competitive, to be seen as business-like, to employ the strategies
of business in restructuring public institutions such as schools, and thus to
be seen as lean and efficient and to incorporate managerial ideologies and
technical resources to support all of this—all of these things seem to have
been cemented in place.
Not all of this is necessarily bad. After all, we spend billions of dollars on
schooling. Evidence of success is needed, as is accountability in where the
money goes and whether it is well spent. Of course, issues such as what the
goals of schooling should be, what the knowledge that we teach should be,
who decides, what counts as evidence, accountability to whom, and similar
kinds of things are not easy to ask or to answer. But they can get forgotten
in the midst of our search for efficiency, measurability, and business-like
procedures.
Too often our analyses of neoliberalism in education have been at such a
general level as to make it hard to see what is actually happening and what is
actually at stake when schools are turned into sources of profit. This is exactly
where Hidden Markets enters and where it makes a significant contribution.
Burch brings together approaches taken from critical policy analysis and new
institutional theory to help explain not only what is happening, but how and
why it is happening.
Burch’s account is well-balanced. Her task is not to condemn. She un-
derstands the demands and complexities of schools and on the people who
work in them in times such as these. She does not romanticize what goes on
educational policy or in the daily life of schools currently. Rather, she suc-
ceeds in showing what the costs are of the transformations that are occurring
in these policies and practices right now. Hidden Markets doesn’t answer the
question of whether these kinds of reforms lead to higher test scores, often the
only question that many people tend to ask. Rather, she asks questions about
things that are occurring below the radar screen, so to speak. In essence, the
questions she raises can be summarized this way: What are the important
hidden effects of our insistent focus on commodification, marketization,
xii • Series Editor’s Introduction to Hidden Markets

accountability, and performance as measured by standardized test data on

the entire school system? This is a question that is absolutely essential that
we ask. As Burch shows, the answers to this question may be more than a
little discomforting to those of us who truly want a school system that is
effective and responsive.
Her examples of the hidden effects of the growth of for-profit relations in
the daily workings of schools provide us with a picture that has exceptional
clarity. She examines the growth of large and small firms that sell expertise,
technology, tests, tutoring services, curricula, and all kinds of managerial
resources to schools. But Burch also wisely understands that in the current
context our very understanding of what counts as a school is undergoing
major changes. Virtual schools and home schooling are helping to redefine
who the teacher is, what the curriculum is and from where it comes, and
who is in charge of its selection, evaluation, and use. This is something that
I too have weighed in on elsewhere.7 But in Hidden Markets Patricia Burch
markedly extends a number of my and others’ arguments and analyses and
does so in truly illuminating ways. She has done her homework empirically,
carefully searching out data that are not usually readily available to the public.
In the process, she teaches all of us a good deal about both how all of these
policies operate in real schools and real communities and how these changes
can and do create opportunities for profit.
At the end of this Introduction, it is wise to give Patricia Burch the last
words. The final paragraphs of the book both summarize Burch’s arguments
and, just and importantly, issue words of caution that must be taken very
seriously.
In this book, I have argued for more attention to hidden developments in
K-12 education contracting. We do not expect for-profit, private firms to
have the same level of accessibility and transparency as public agencies.
Yet, these private, for-profit firms draw on public funds that are designed
to serve common interests. Of course, it is important to recognize that
private firms have a role to play in public education. They long have acted
as suppliers to education and will continue to do so. Under certain
conditions, they can contribute to the democratic purposes of educa-
tion.
But, right now, the center of gravity in public policy is shifting.
Ideologies of neoliberalism are remaking education policy to fit the needs
of the market. The ideas are pushed as helping public education al-
though the arguments have little empirical basis. The governance of
public education is not just another education market. The distinction
between public policy and private markets in education, as in other
sectors, is very important, and it is worth defending.
 Series Editor’s Introduction to Hidden Markets • xiii

With its rich sources of data and careful analysis of what is happening on
the ground as schools increasingly become sources of profit, Hidden Markets
demonstrates why these issues count. It deserves to be read by anyone who
cares about the real effects of educational policies both in the United States
and elsewhere.
Michael W. Apple
John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction
and Educational Policy Studies
University of Wisconsin—Madison

Notes
1. Michael W. Apple (2006), Educating the “Right” Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality,
2nd edition. New York: Routledge.
2. Colin Leys (2003), Market-Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest. New
York: Verso, p. 4.
3. Stephen Ball and Deborah Youdell (2008), Hidden Privatization in Education. Brussels: Educa-
tion International.
4. Stephen Ball (2008), The Education Debate. Bristol, UK: Policy Press, pp. 43-44.
5. Ball (2008), p. 150.
6. For support of NCLB, see for example, Frederick Hess and Chester Finn, eds. (2004), Leaving
No Child Behind? Options for Kids in Failing Schools. New York: Palgrave, and Paul Peterson
and Martin West, eds. (2003), No Child Left Behind? The Politics and Practice of School Ac-
countability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. For some of the varied criticisms,
see Deborah Meier and George Wood, eds. (2004), Many Children Left Behind: How the No
Child Left Behind Act is Damaging Our Children and Our Schools. Boston: Beacon Press, An-
gela Valenzuela, ed. (2005), Leaving Children Behind: How “Texas-style” Accountability Fails
Latino Youth. Albany: State University of New York Press, and Michael W. Apple (2006).
7. Michael W. Apple (2006).
 Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed to the development of this book. I am particu-

larly grateful to my colleagues, Michael Apple and Mary H. Metz, for their
tremendous support and valued feedback. I also have benefited from con-
versations with Nancy Kendall, Harry Brighouse, Beth Graue, Jeffrey Henig,
Alex Molnar, Michael Olneck, Simone Schweber, Gail Sunderman, Carolyn
Heinrich, and Robert Meyer. Numerous graduate students at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison collaborated in the project and gave generously of
their time. This includes Joy Connolly, Joseph Donovan, Annalee Good,
Jocelyn Huber, May Hara, Tracy Hayes, Kathy Price and Matthew Steinberg.
My special thanks are due to Annalee Good, who provided expert research
assistance at all stages of the work. James Spillane and Milbrey McLaughlin
have offered encouragement and friendship throughout the years.
I also am deeply appreciative of the time and insights of all who partici-
pated in the study. The University of Wisconsin Graduate School and the
Wisconsin Center for Education Research provided critical financial support
for the work.

xv
 CHAPTER 1
Trends and Origins

The New Privatization

The center of gravity in public policy has shifted. Once considered relatively
fringe, market principles of competition, consumerism, and incentives linked
to performance, have become accepted policy strategies for improving social
outcomes. Proponents of the market model claim that problems such as un-
safe highways and crowded jails stem from government-run programs and
government monopolies. Their idea is that if policy making is modeled after
market relationships, government will become more cost efficient; govern-
ment services will improve and society will benefit.1
This book examines an aspect of this trend within American public
education—a trend that I call the new privatization.2 In the new privatiza-
tion, education policy and the market have become more closely linked.
The No Child Left Behind Act (the 2002 revision of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965) has helped private firms make inroads
into local education markets. The firms gaining prominence under the new
privatization are drawing on political networks, new technologies, and
capital investments to become major suppliers to school systems for a vast
array of educational services. This includes services such as test score data
storage, remedial instruction for the poor, online curriculum, and online
school management.
Public monies including Federal, state, and local dollars intended for
schools help fund the operations of the businesses that I describe. While
drawing on public money and on the authority of public policy, the work of
the new privatization is relatively hidden from view. The activities are largely
invisible to taxpayers and general citizens. The firms keep a low profile. They

1
2 • Hidden Markets

work with school districts through a complex web of contracts and subcon-
tracts. They sell their services under different brand names. Further, many
are privately held and thus have little obligation to report their finances and
operations.
The new privatization is framed as increasing access to high quality educa-
tion and making government more accountable.3 Given these claims, much
more transparency is needed about these firms and their implications for
public policy. In this book, I begin this project by mapping the financial and
operational reach of some of largest for-profit firms in the K–12 education
industry and in describing three cases of education privatization.
This book will not attempt to answer the question: Do for-profit firms
in the education industry contribute to increases in student achievement?
Neither is it a book that aims primarily to expose corporate greed. Both are
questions in which readers may be interested, but they are beyond the scope
of this work. Instead, my intention is to offer a close look at the activities
and roles being transferred from the public to the private sector under new
forms of education contracting and to begin to trace the implications of
these trends. I hope the book will heighten public awareness of this topic,
encourage us to think critically about the risks involved, and provide a basis
for launching further empirical work.
In the next section, I begin with a discussion of the discourse that is pro-
pelling the new privatization. In the second half of the chapter, I describe
the framework that I use to study these developments. In this framework,
I draw on ideas from critical studies of education markets as well from the
new institutionalism in organizational analysis.

Underlying Ideologies
The new privatization is harnessed to those broader ideological shifts in
theories of economic and political regulation that are referred to as neolib-
eralism.4

Neoliberalism
Under neoliberalism we are expected to believe that the market can do every-
thing better and that government should be remade in the market’s image.5
Private property rights, free trade, consumerism, performance audits, and
entrepreneurs become the means for improving social welfare. Government
becomes an extension of the market; it is expected to do its work and follow
its principles.6
Neoliberalism was once a new idea and required justification. In the
current decade, neoliberalism has achieved more legitimacy.7 It is called
a prudent and measured policy alternative, rather than being viewed as
 Trends and Origins • 3

extremist. Neoliberalism has lodged in domestic policies and practices

across the globe in part through the efforts of international organizations
such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank. Neoliberal-
ism also has helped establish and extend the reach of multinational con-
glomerates doing business in the global economy. Like many movements,
neoliberalism is viral in the sense that it attaches to expedient political
concepts. Through these dynamics, neoliberalism spreads across policy
under the cover of concepts such public–private partnership, privatization,
and globalization.8
The privatization of government services represents an important chap-
ter in the rise of neoliberalism in the United States. As Stephen Ball notes
privatization is “not an end in and of itself but part of a mix of [neoliberal]
strategies.”9 Privatization generally refers to the use of the private sector in
the provision of goods and services. Arguments for privatization derive from
standard market theory: As the theory goes, the higher the competition across
suppliers, the higher the quality product and the lower the production costs.
From this perspective, the outsourcing of functions previously performed by
government creates a competitive market for public services, increases the
quality of those services, and reduces costs for taxpayers.
Arguments for privatization also derive from public choice theory. Under
public choice theory, government employees are motivated by self-interest as
opposed to public service. They do things that will protect this self-interest;
for example, by seeking funding increases for their particular department or
unit. In the aggregate, the self-interested actions of government employees
can build bureaucracy and make government unresponsive, claim the public
choice theorists. Privatization is invoked as a means for reducing the control
of bureaucracy over government services.10
Privatization has a long history in the United States; but in recent decades
has achieved more political clout. Once called a radical idea by mainstream
conservatives, privatization is seen now as a legitimate strategy for reform-
ing government. Some policy activity has centered at the Federal level.11 For
example, the past four presidents, including Democratic President William
Clinton, have promoted various forms of privatization. Congress has passed
laws enabling private firms to access public funds to provide social services
previously considered the domain of Federal agencies. Federal Research
and Development Laboratories are being privatized. In local government,
the privatization agenda also is spreading. In states such as Florida, South
Carolina, Indiana, and Massachusetts, governors have privatized state trans-
portation, prisons, and child welfare and adoption services. In Indianapolis
and Chicago, mayors advocating privatization have outsourced much of the
city’s infrastructure including its bus fleets, parking fines, computer mainte-
nance, and city record-keeping.
4 • Hidden Markets

Privatization and Education

As in other areas of American social policy, privatization has become a
buzzword in education circles. In education, the term covers a broad range of
activities, initiatives, programs, and policies. This includes reform ideas such
as charter schools, vouchers, and the contracting out of education services
such as school management.12
Education privatization has a long history in the United States. However,
before the 1990s and the era of the Educational Management Organizations,
contracting for services in education tended to focus on what has been called
noninstructional services or nonessentials. Noninstructional services have
included things such as food service, vending, transportation, and custodial
services.13 Historically, the most commonly privatized services in K–12
education have tended to be transportation, cafeteria services, vending, and
equipment maintenance.14 There are reasons for this. First, the argument
has been made that these services supplement rather than supplant the role
of government in education. Second, those who support the contracting of
noninstructional services do so on the grounds of cost efficiencies. By this
logic, if an outside vendor can provide a service more cost efficiently than a
government employee, and if the service is nonessential or represents a one-
time need, then government contracting in education makes sense.15
However, education privatization entered a new chapter in the 1990s, with
the rise of educational management organizations (EMOs). EMOs are com-
prehensive in nature and include companies that manage entire schools or
school systems. These firms typically assume full responsibility for all aspects
of school operations, including administration, teacher training, building
maintenance, food service, and clerical support. Educational Alternatives
was one of the first EMOs. In 1990, it contracted with Dade County Florida
to manage several schools. Soon thereafter, other EMOs were established
and competing for contracts with urban school districts. From 1999 to 2003,
the number of private companies managing public schools (mostly charter
schools) tripled.16
Edison Schools, the brainchild of entrepreneur Chris Whittle, is perhaps
the best known of the EMOs. Whittle had built a media empire around
businesses such as television marketing broadcast in the waiting rooms of
doctors’ offices. Through Channel One, Whittle entered the public school
market. Channel One provides schools with free television equipment and
in return guarantees advertisers a captive audience of students.
Whittle’s next project, EMOs, gained traction, in part because it coincided
with a push for public school vouchers by Republicans, under the adminis-
tration of President George H.W. Bush.17 Chris Whittle was part of what one
political insider called the education privatization brain trust. This group
included Lamar Alexander, former Governor of Tennessee and Secretary
 Trends and Origins • 5

of Education under President Bush, David Kearns, the Chief Executive Of-
ficer of IBM, and William Sanders, Professor at the University of Tennessee
among others.18
This was the post Nation at Risk era—a time when corporate models of
school reform were touted as a means to turn around both schools and the
nation’s economy. Policy talk and action centered on decentralizing authority
to the building level and holding schools more accountable for performance
outcomes. Books such as Politics, Markets and America’s Schools by John
Chubb and Terry Moe argued that the democratic institutions by which
America’s schools had been governed for the past half century were incompat-
ible with effective schooling.19 It was in this political climate, that the private
management of failing public schools gained a foothold.
In spite of mounting political support, in the 1990s, there were strong
negative public reactions to EMOs. It was reported that Edison was inflat-
ing test score performance in its schools as a strategy for buoying public
and investor support. There were rumors, later confirmed, that Edison also
was in deep financial trouble; it was losing money and going into debt. Wall
Street investors in Edison grew skittish after Fortune magazine published
an article identifying the Edison project as a failure. In 2003, the company
went private.

The Market Model and Federal Education Policy

The Edison experiment attracted much public and media attention. However,
at the national level, another defining moment in the rise of privatization
was the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 (IASA) and Goals 2000.
Under these policies, states were expected to “establish challenging content
and performance standards, implement assessments that measured student
performance against these standards, and hold school and school systems
accountable for the achievement of all students.”20
Several states had been experimenting with content standards when IASA
and Goals 2000 were passed. States such as Michigan and California had
adopted what became known as standards based reforms. Standards based
reforms established goals for what students should know and be able to do
at different grade levels. In the mid- to late 1990s, mayors of several large
urban school districts, including Chicago, Seattle, and New York, attempted
a high stakes version of standards based reforms with incentives for test
score performance.
Following in the wake of these local efforts, the administration of President
George W. Bush successfully pushed through Congress, even stronger Federal
education legislation that had accountability, choice, and privatization as an or-
ganizing framework. As noted above, the administration called the legislation
6 • Hidden Markets

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB is commonly understood as a

turning point in US Federal education policy because it significantly expands
the Federal reach in state and local education programs through spending
conditions linked to test score performance. The law mandates annual testing
of children in grades 3-8 including children in non-Title I schools and two
populations previously excluded from testing—special education students and
English language learners. In addition, NCLB attaches progressive sanctions
to test score performance. I discuss these sanctions in more detail below.
NCLB represents a significant departure in Federal education policy in
terms of its reach and regulations. However, another defining characteristic
of the law is its neoliberal and proprivatization stance. It is not just a Federal
version of standards-based reform with the added twist of high stakes con-
sequences. NCLB also is a free market Federal education policy of a scope
that we have not seen before.
To be sure, NCLB is a complex law. It is a law of intense regulation and
a law of deregulation. It is a law that includes serious attention to the poor,
and a law that benefits large corporations. It should not be reduced to being
viewed as one thing. But, in NCLB, one stream of thinking, market prin-
ciples, has without qualification, become more dominant. To a much greater
extent than we have seen in the past in education, NCLB invokes the need
for private involvement in public education and secures public funds for use
by private firms. Under NCLB, Federal education policy becomes a vehicle
for stimulating and protecting the market.
In some areas, the connection between NCLB and the market model is
very explicit. The obvious links include statutes that require schools to make
test score targets under strict timelines. The market model also is explicit in
NCLB choice provisions. After two years of not making test score targets,
schools must offer parents the option of transferring to a nonfailing school
in the district. After three years, the school must make after-school program
vouchers available to families, paid for with NCLB funds . Over time, schools
not making test score targets may be closed and their staff fired. They may be
reopened as charter schools and taken over by for-profit private firms.
But there are other ways that NCLB advances the privatization agenda that
are much harder to see. This more invisible aspect of the Federal privatization
agenda appears in the language of statutes, in the regulations that fill in the
blanks of the statutes and in the nonregulatory guidance where appropriate
action is defined. Deborah Stone has called this category of policy “standing
orders.” Under standing orders, there are no specific sanctions attached but
there is always the threat of noncompliance.21
One also can think of the language of regulations, guidance, and budgets
as a second layer of policy. They lie beneath the laws that are the focus of
popular debates. While difficult to see, these second layer policies are impor-
 Trends and Origins • 7

tant windows on the current ideologies used to stabilize public policy—what

I referred to earlier as policy’s center of gravity. The mandates establish the
rules, but the regulations, guidance, and budgets will bring the game into
being. When one analyzes this second layer of policy in NCLB, it becomes
quite clear how much the law’s designers trust in the market. In what follows,
I offer some examples of what I mean.

Second Layer Policies

First, NCLB redefines what we should expect from government in the admin-
istration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA).
Essentially, the law ties the roles of those who administer ESEA to the market
principles of centralized data. Program managers responsible for the flow of
this data now have much of their work defined by test scores.22 There are rules
about what percentage of students that must take the tests (95%) if districts
and states are to avoid sanctions. There are rules about when data must be
reported (how it must be analyzed, the comparisons that must be included
in that analysis) and who must be mailed the data.
NCLB ties the role of government employees more tightly to data by means
of a narrowing of existing procedures. The law’s redefinition of technical
assistance illustrates this strategy. For much of ESEA’s history, state educa-
tion agencies have been required to provide technical assistance linked to
districts and schools. NCLB defines technical assistance in very precise terms
tightly linked to the law’s accountability mandates. In the language of the law,
“technical assistance shall include assistance in analyzing the data from the
assessments required under 111b3. It also must include technical assistance
to select methods of instruction based on scientifically based research and
that have proven effective in addressing the specific instructional issues that
caused the school to be identified for school improvement.”23
Budget changes can be another indicator of the shift in logic used to sta-
bilize policy. According to figures compiled by the Committee for Education
Funding, the President’s proposed budget consistently has called for reduc-
tions in or the elimination of several programs historically used by states and
districts to provide technical assistance to underperforming schools even as
there was an increase in the number of schools not making test score targets.
This includes Title V, which provides flexible funding to states, and has been
used for professional development as well as Comprehensive School Reform,
which provides grants to districts through states to provide technical assis-
tance to the low performing schools.24
NCLB also redefines the roles of parents in ESEA programs and their
rights under the law. Federal programs that originated under the War on
Poverty, such as ESEA, historically have had strong requirements for parent
8 • Hidden Markets

participation in program planning at the school, district, state, and national

level. Over the course of different authorizations (with the exception of the
Reagan years) these provisions consistently have been strengthened.25
However, under NCLB, through budget changes and new spending regula-
tions, the role of parents in contributing to policy making at the school and
district level is deemphasized while the rights of parents as consumers are
strengthened. For example, since the 1970s, ESEA has contained provisions
requiring parent participation and representation in local decision mak-
ing. The 1988 law further required that parental involvement activities be
developed through meaningful consultation with parents of participating
children.
Under NCLB, these parent involvement requirements were kept, but
decentered. For example, in 2007, for the sixth year in a row, the Bush ad-
ministration sought to eliminate funding for the Parental Assistance and
Local Family Information Centers (PIRCs)—a program that provided grants
for school-based resource centers to support parent involvement in schools,
and the only source of funding for the parent involvement activities required
under ESEA. The administration also proposed the Even Start program: Mod-
eled after Head Start, Even Start has had some of the strongest requirements
for parent involvement and parent education. Under the Bush administration,
the funding for Even Start significantly has been reduced.
While the Bush administration moved to reduce funding for comprehen-
sive approaches to parent involvement, it simultaneously increased parents’
rights as individual consumers, primarily by enhancing their procedural
rights. Under NCLB, parents of children in underperforming schools are
given options to exit the school and to attend any other school in the district
that has space and is not underperforming. Parents also have notice rights to
test score data, data on school performance, and the qualifications of their
child’s teacher. These and other NCLB provisions linked to testing mandates
all focus on the rights of parents as individual consumers over emphasis on
parents’ role in collective decision making.
NCLB also shifts ESEA closer to the logic of the market through the as-
surances that it affords to private providers of services and as discussed later,
through limited regulation of these providers. Rather than simply making
contracting for educational services an allowable expense (as we have seen in
the past), NCLB mandates contracting under certain conditions. Under the
supplemental education services provisions, schools that do not make test
score targets for three years or more must make after-school programming
available to students in that school, paid for by the district. Under certain
conditions, the district may provide services. However, districts that do not
make test score targets for three years or more are prohibited from providing
these services themselves, although they still must pay for them.
 Trends and Origins • 9

In chapter 4, I will talk more about the SES program and its policies. For
now, I offer two examples of how NCLB clearly signals through its regula-
tions that the access of private firms to public funds deserves government
protection. First, as part of its responsibilities under the law, the state edu-
cation agency (SEA) is required to provide annual information to vendors
about contracting possibilities. In other words, its responsibility as defined
by law is to make sure that potential vendors are aware of the policy and as
a result of the mandates of the policy, possible demand for their services
(and therefore possible revenues). Local education agencies (LEA) also are
required to provide notice to parents of eligible children about the avail-
ability of services.26
The law is very specific on this point. States must make this information
available to vendors on an annual basis. The importance of making sure
the private sector has the information that it needs is not a footnote in the
policy; it is identified as one of the state’s major responsibilities. Further, the
law requires that districts that have schools with choice and supplemental
education services (SES) must ensure that all eligible students participate in
the program. Second, under the regulations, if the district has demonstrated
that there is demand for services, and does not meet this demand (students are
not enrolled, the money set aside for SES remains unspent) than the district
is considered out of compliance and can face sanctions. The unspent money
must be carried over to the next year and reserved again for SES.27
Further, as described in chapter 4, under SES, states are strongly encour-
aged to do everything possible to maintain conditions for an open market
and to restrict taking any actions that may place constraints on that market.
Specifically, while they might establish a range for what providers can charge
districts under SES contracts; they are strongly encouraged to set ranges
rather than absolute values on pricing for the explicit purpose of not “unduly
restricting providers’ service delivery options.”28 In response to comment,
final regulations attempt to make more explicit the responsibility of LEAs
and SEAs to ensure that ELL and students with disabilities recieve appropri-
ate educational services.29 In fact, as I argue in chapter 4, the nonregulatory
guidance appears to takes pains to exempt private SES providers from the
civil rights responsibilities required of government SES providers. The guid-
ance states that SES private providers are in principle not required to follow
civil rights statutes because these statutes only apply to direct recipients of
Federal funds.
There is more. For most of ESEA’s history, districts have contracted with
private firms to provide services to eligible students in both private and pa-
rochial schools. The services for private school students must be developed
in consultation with officials of the private schools. NCLB strengthened these
requirements by, among other things, requiring meetings with private school
10 • Hidden Markets

officials and a written affirmation signed by private school officials that the
required consultation has occurred.30 In these and other ways, current ESEA
policy clearly seeks to give private organizations more flexibility, greater
access to public funds, while shielding private firms from responsibility for
children’s civil rights. Writing about privatization in the United Kingdom,
Stephen Ball describes “the multi-layered and multi-leveled” dynamics
whereby business and policy are linked.31 Policy texts also have multiple
layers, and in U.S. Federal education policy, this is where the privatization
agenda is being inserted—in the dense web of rules and regulations that
frame policy meaning.
In the first section, I discussed the economic and political ideologies that
are the root of current forms of privatization. I ended with an argument for
how NCLB introduces a new chapter in the rise of neoliberalism and how
design of the law shifts the meaning of parent participation, good govern-
ment, and private sector involvement toward market principles.

Understanding the New Privatization

Next, I introduce the ideas that have framed my own thinking about privatiza-
tion in education. I first consider the work of those in the field of education
that have probed, from somewhat different disciplinary perspectives, the
relationship between markets and education policy. I conceive of this work
as critical studies of education markets. By critical, I mean that the studies
step outside of the immediacy of policy requirements and popular trends,
and think hard about policy origins and assumptions. The studies also are
critical in their concern with the policies’ social justice implications. I make
no claims to being exhaustive here. My intent is to highlight the lessons
learned so far through a discussion of representative scholarship.
Following this, I introduce another dimension of my frame, drawing on
ideas based in the new institutionalism. The new institutionalism in sociol-
ogy offers a complementary lens on the role of broader cultural norms in
influencing organizational behavior. In contrast to older varieties of institu-
tionalism, it incorporates questions of agency and conflict and in this way I
believe both complements and extends the perspectives of the critical studies
discussed next.

Critical Studies of Education Markets

Critical studies of education markets consider the links between develop-
ments in education and broader trends in social policy. I discussed some of
these trends at the beginning of this chapter. Critical studies treat education
privatization as nested in larger theories and economic thinking. This kind
 Trends and Origins • 11

of work always is important; it is particularly important now, because of

the dominance of market thinking in public policy. One possible casualty
from the rise of market ideology in education is a further narrowing of our
research agenda. Rather than questioning the logic of the market, we start
to take that logic as given and align our research somewhat unconsciously
with quasi-market values: These questions would include, “Are resources
being used efficiently? Are performance indicators being met? What are the
constraints being placed on the autonomy of organizations, that can take
precedence in our research design and in research funding?” The values of
the market start to frame the research we conduct in public education.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

I am not suggesting that we stop asking questions about the effects of re-
forms on student achievement. Data under certain conditions can make
more transparent inequitable and racist practices in education. But, we also
need to ask the broader questions about ideology and policy. When we ask
how education policy is connected to broader trends in public sector reform
and when we leverage theory in this work, we are offered in the words of
Stephen Ball “the possibility of a different language which is not caught up
with the assumptions and inscriptions of policymakers and the immediacy of
practice.”32 To do so does not mean that we remove ourselves from practice;
it means that we take care to not assume, in the questions we ask, that the
logic of policy is necessarily right. This broader lens is also what we need to
bring to current forms of contracting in education. We need to ask, not just
whether the contracts “work” in terms of saving money or increasing student
outcomes, but why the rise of contracting now and what broader functions
is the trend serving?

New Roles, Harmful Effects

The second issue concerns how the logic of the market moves in and through
education practice. How if at all are market models changing how we are sup-
posed to think about certain practices and the roles of different stakeholders?
For example, Michael Apple talks about the remodeling of schooling under
neoliberalism into a vast supermarket where all are expected to play the role
of sellers or buyers:
In effect, education is seen as simply one more product like bread, cars,
and television. By turning it over to the market through vouchers and
choice plans, education will be largely self-regulating. Thus, democracy
is turned into consumption practices. In these plans, the ideal of the
citizen is that of the purchaser. The ideological effects of this position
12 • Hidden Markets

are momentous. Rather than democracy being a political concept, it is

transformed into a wholly economic concept.33
Parents become consumers; students become human capital with their
education calculated in rates of return; administrators are expected to act like
managers and entrepreneurs. More than just an abstraction, this refashioning
of roles makes its way into policy, examples of which I offered earlier in my
discussion of NCLB.
The redefinition of roles under neoliberalism can have very harmful
effects on communities. In her insightful analysis of the Chicago School
Reform Act of 1995, Pauline Lipman demonstrates how the high stakes re-
form undermined community in schools, how it nurtured a culture of fear
in some of these schools and tore apart what teachers had built.34 Writing
about education reforms in the United Kingdom, Stephen Ball describes the
conflicts that emerge for classroom teachers when policy is modeled after
the market. He refers to the recasting of teachers under neoliberalism as
the “culture of performativity.”35 In performativity, the work of the teacher
is organized around judgments, comparisons, and displays. These pressures
as Ball notes can create profound professional dilemmas for teachers. In the
aggregate, they can have the effect of redefining a profession in ways that
are deprofessionalizing.
Gold and colleagues expand the frame by arguing that market based edu-
cation services can have negative consequences on community organizations
as well. In their analysis of Philadelphia’s education contracting model, they
posited that contracting relationships in the district made it “difficult for
[neighborhood organizations and advocacy groups with limited resources]—
so often important voices for equity and sustainability in a district—to take
an independent stance from the district.”36
As the model of consumerism rises, perceptions about the private sector
can shift as well. I noted earlier how NCLB expounds the idea of private firms
having a legitimate claim on public funds, using the 2003 regulations around
supplemental educational services as one example. The law also requires that
districts that do not make test score targets (which not incidentally tend to
be districts that serve the poor) be eliminated from the market. As noted
earlier, under NCLB, a district not making test score targets must cease be-
ing a provider of after-school programming although it must pay for this
programming.
In a model that shrinks the role of parents to that of consumer, and nar-
rows the idea of technical assistance to the management of data, there is
much more room for profit-oriented firms to do work typically performed
by government employees. In other words, policies of privatization create a
vacuum by shrinking the role of the state to certain functions that private
firms then can fill.
 Trends and Origins • 13

Political Dynamics and Market Models

Market models of policy do not simply descend onto education; they enter
discourse and become lodged in policy through political work. Two strands
of literature are particularly useful for understanding the political work linked
to market-based education policy. One strand develops the argument that
neoliberalism creates unlikely but powerful political alliances. For example,
in their analysis of the charter school movement in California, Amy Stuart
Wells and associates describe successful efforts by neoliberals to shoehorn a
conservative charter school agenda into the broader movement for systemic
reform and specifically how the Right used charter schools to gain financial
support for home schooling.37 In a similar vein, drawing on research con-
ducted in England, the United States, and New Zealand, Michael Apple maps
the ways in which the neoliberals have succeeded in bringing the interests
of the new middle class (and concerns with efficiency, management, and
accountability) under their wing.38
Another strand of literature, linked to a political perspective on education
policy, employs regime theory for examining political activity in education
privatization. Bulkley maps the insights of this work in the context of apply-
ing the frame to the Philadelphia contracting model. Among other insights,
the work draws attention to the political dynamics whereby former district
employees leave their positions and become contractors themselves.39 Other
work in regime theory has examined the political relationships that support
education contracts. The relationships extend both horizontally (to not-for-
profits subcontracting with for-profits) and vertically (up the ladder from
district level politics to state level politics).40
This combined research helps us see the political strategy behind market
based education policy. In my own work, I also pay close attention to the
political activities that support the new privatization. I focus in particular
on the work of individuals and organizations that are operating nationally.
This includes former education officials now working in the private sector
and using their government experience to stimulate investor interest in
the education industry. It also includes large privately held for-profit firms
whose business strategies are shaping the K–12 education industry. I also
examine the rise of hybrid organizations that stitch together neoliberal
education policy with the investment strategies of Silicon Valley social
entrepreneurs.
In my analysis, I also consider how privatization’s intermediaries as I
call them push the movement forward through less direct political work.
This includes activities such as the establishment of investment criteria for
education ventures, the quiet authoring of promarket regulatory guidance,
and report writing by market researchers that extols the industry’s promise.
I explore these and other examples in more depth in chapter 3.41
14 • Hidden Markets

Present Dangers
Privatization proponents characterize the market as neutral in its effects. It
may not solve all of the problems of society, but it will not make them worse.
In critical studies of education markets, this assumption repeatedly has been
challenged on the basis of empirical evidence. The heart of the critique is
that market education reforms such as charter schools and vouchers can
have the effect of reproducing inequalities. For example, in a review of school
reforms in the United Kingdom under the governments of Thatcher and
Major, Geoff Whitty argues that the weight of evidence shows that neoliberal
policies reproduce race and class based hierarchies rather than replacing
them.42 Amy Stuart Wells reaches a similar conclusion in her meta-synthesis
of school choice research, writing: “Whose interests are being served by this
[the charter school reform]? The answer is, rarely the most disadvantaged
students. And this clearly echoes research findings from the United States
and abroad regarding the effect of school choice policies.”43
The neutrality of markets also has been challenged on the ground that
it serves to erode democratic processes in education. In his analyses of the
choice movement in the United States, Jeffrey Henig states, that the “real dan-
ger in market-based choice proposals is not that students may attend private
schools at public expense but that they will erode the public forums in which
decisions with societal consequences may be resolved.”44 Henig is making a
critical point about the importance of expanding our frame for thinking about
the effects of privatization. Beyond the shifting of resources and authority
(public to private), market-based education policies can have destabilizing
effects on decision-making structures in education. This includes the basic
premise that the complex nature of education necessitates collective deci-
sion making and collective input into policy design. Market based education
governance is a different model of governance—based on consumerism and
competition. When it is on the rise, decision-making processes anchored
in principles of collaboration, collective input, and deliberation, struggle
to maintain a foothold in schools. As neoliberal policies create more space
for market principles, they can make less space for democratic processes in
education policy and policies informed by public interest.45
From the perspective of an economist, Henry Levin also writes about
these issues and has been doing so for many years. In the 1980s, at the outset
of the current privatization movement,46 Levin recognized the presence of
a perceived dichotomy between public and private interests, but questioned
its premise, writing, “a public choice approach could yield greater benefits,
while not undermining the other ones.”47
In sum, critical studies of education policy and markets raise serious
questions about who benefits, who loses, and at what cost to democracy. The
 Trends and Origins • 15

consensus in this literature is that the poor will bear the burden of market
failures.48 I carry these lessons into my work on new forms of privatization.
My interest in the new privatization is tightly connected to my concerns
for social justice, specifically whether and how the most economically
disadvantaged students are faring under emerging forms of privatization.
To what extent are they able to access the services and products that are
intended for their benefit? What do patterns among the largest firms reveal
about how much the market actually values low-income high need students?
What if anything about local governance is evolving and at what cost to the
democratic purposes of schooling?

What Does the New Institutionalism Have to Do With It?

In this section, I describe another set of ideas—work done largely outside of
education—that further frames my analysis of the new privatization. This
is the new institutionalism. Institutional theorists studying organizational
behavior have been concerned with three central questions: Why is it that
organizations located in diverse settings and that have little interaction nev-
ertheless adopt policies and practices that are similar? Institutional theorists
also have been concerned with the break between organizational design and
actual practice. For example, why is it that, in education, there are many
examples of reforms that have been faithfully implemented and yet very
few examples of sustained improvements at the core of schooling? A third
question concerns how broader cultural forces contribute to the stability of
practices across organizations. For example, why are outdated practices—
such as the one-size-fits-all approach to teacher staff development—so hard
to change?
For several years, I have been thinking and writing about how ideas from
the new institutionalism can be used in education studies.49 A 2001 piece
by Brian Rowan sketched the contours of a research agenda for examining
the school improvement industry. This piece and Rowan’s subsequent work
further postioned my thinking about the new institutionalism as a frame for
examining what has started to happen under NCLB.50 Specifically, Rowan calls
for more research on market processes in education and on private provid-
ers working in education as part of institutionalized processes. As noted by
Rowan, much of the focus in education policy research has been on formal
policies and regulation.51 Drawing on ideas from institutionalism, Rowan
makes an argument for more attention to the market and its transactions as
a form of social and political regulation.
In other work, I have set out my own version of how ideas from institution-
alism can be used as a framework for analyzing education policy. The thrust
of this work is on how recent theorizing can be used as a lens for looking
16 • Hidden Markets

at the role of for-profit and not-for-profit firms in the design of policy, how
the work of these organizations is embedded in broader cultural frames,
and how the activity of these firms creates tensions and possibilities within
education. Here, I offer a simple introduction to four ideas (processes of
institutionalization, isomorphism, organizational fields, and field effects)
and their relevance to the new privatization. In the book, I illustrate these
concepts and return to the larger frame and its relevance in chapter 7.

Processes of Institutionalization
From an institutional perspective, the practices and policies adopted by
schools and governing agencies reflect the rules and structures in wider
society.52 Ideas about what people should do, what the problem is, who has
the expertise to solve it are the stuff of policies. Policies reflect these ideas
and their broader social construction as opposed to somehow automati-
cally solving them. Earlier in the chapter, I described how current forms
of privatization are harnessed to neoliberal thinking. I develop these ideas
further in the chapters that follow. Specifically, I point to the absence of
empirical support for current forms of education privatization as further
evidence of the institutionalizing processes at play. The market model of
policy as any model of policy is based on a particular set of ideas about
how the world works.

Isomorphism and For-Profit Firms

Structural isomorphism refers to the convergence in policies and practices
among organizations operating in a similar environment or competing for
the same goods. Organizations in that environment adopt practices that
they think others view as exemplary or that are considered routine. These
cues exist in the broader environment. For example, they may be reflected
in public policy designs or laws; they may be visible through the practices
of “model” organizations.
In education research, explanations of structural isomorphism gener-
ally have referred to the mimicking of processes across public entities, in
particular schools, districts, and states. For example, Ogawa has argued
that the popularity of school-based management as a reform strategy in the
1980s derived from institutional pressures (structural isomorphism) and
schools’ efforts to imitate other schools and to signal their commitment to
decentralized authority.53
In this book, I view for-profit firms, not just public agencies, as embed-
ded in institutionalized environments. Rather than necessarily challenging
established practice and the status quo (as privatization proponents claim
 Trends and Origins • 17

they will) the involvement of for-profit firms can reinforce the status quo.
In their marketing materials, for-profit firms may highlight the innovative
character of their products and services. Frequently, however, their influ-
ence preserves common, but outdated and ineffective practices. The firms
perhaps are innovative in their forms of delivery but the content and form
of educational activities also can be routine. For example, for-profit firms
sell curriculum based on pedagogy that some researchers have identified as
ineffective. To offer another example, for-profit firms can work in and with
top-down forms of district management, rather than taking a more grassroots
or decentralized approach.54

Policy Processes and Organizational Fields

Policy studies in K–12 education have tended to concentrate heavily on the
governmental system—on interactions within and across state departments
of education, school districts, and schools. Particularly, in an era in which
there is a greater diversity of organizations involved in K–12 education, and
in an era in which the role of private firms in aspects of policy is mandated,
frames are needed that place nongovernmental organizations and their influ-
ence on the main stage in policy implementation.
Institutional theorists have introduced the field as a lens for examining
how interactions across different organizations contribute to the building and
dismantling of institutions. In this book, I use the frame of the organizational
field to examine how the forces of policy and markets are converging and
in the process creating a new organizational arena. In this arena, new kinds
of governance arrangements are emerging where, for example, private firms
make policy for public school teachers and where private firms regulate the
use of public data through their own security systems.
Fields help use see dependencies across different kinds of organizations
and how through these dependencies, reform ideas travel from the public to
the private sector. The field frame also helps us look inside the K–12 educa-
tion industry. To think of the K–12 education industry as one industry is
a misconception. It is segmented into different kinds of enterprises, serves
different age groups, and attracts firms with different cultures and rules of
engagement. To fully understand what is happening in the industry, we
need to look at different segments of the market within the field of K–12
education—an approach I take in the book in my analysis of different kinds
of privatization. We can also think about the influences of the market and
market-based education policy as rooted in place and time, rather than be-
ing atemporal. The processes and consequences will be different depending
on the historical moment.
18 • Hidden Markets

Field Effects
Recent scholarship in institutional theory also provides a wider lens for think-
ing about the effects of neoliberalism on K–12 education policy and practice.
Field theorists view the settings for examining policy effects as broader than
those typically presented in the policy literature, which tend to concentrate
on policy effects inside of organizations and governing agencies.
In studies of policy implementation, researchers tend to ask, “Will this
reform last?” “What effect has this reform had on schooling practices?” “Has
the policy accomplished what it set out to accomplish?” These are important
questions. However, in my research on the new educational privatization,
I sought a frame that helped me account for other kinds of effects—those
that lie outside of a single organization. How if at all is the new educational
privatization helping to shift the policy space of local educational governance?
What is the institutional debris being left behind?
In the book, I use the idea of field effects to examine what gets left behind
when national for-profit firms get involved in the business of after-school
tutoring for the poor, formative classroom assessment, and online curriculum.
As a result of the new privatization, what kinds of firms are doing business
with public schools? What new categories of organization such as venture
capital philanthropies are emerging? How are the role of parent and the role
of government employee being recast? It is my thesis that it is through these
more institutional effects that the balance of power between the public and
private sector shifts. As for-profit firms become more involved in the work
of instructional reform, they change the environment for reform in ways that
can linger long beyond any one policy, such as NCLB.
In sum, privatization is based on a circular logic as many powerful ideolo-
gies are. Under this ideology, markets provide the answer to the problems of
government because they are markets. If the market fails, either the effects are
not very important or somehow market mechanisms need to be strengthened.
I sought a framework that would provide an alternative perspective to the
market model and would help me ask a larger set of questions about the new
privatization and its effects.
The market model assumes that markets somehow exist outside of policy
and politics, and that firms operating in the market and contracting with
government will be spared the institutional pressures that democratic orga-
nizations face. They will be free to innovate; they will have the flexibility to
be responsive to parents’ needs; they will be cost efficient and frugal all of
the time. But, do the firms under the new privatization really exist in such
a universe, one where information equals change and complex problems
can be explained away? More to the point, does such as universe actually
exist?
 Trends and Origins • 19

To come full circle, while helping me ask questions about the broader
environment of the education industry, the new institutionalism provided a
limited lens for looking at the social justice implications of the new privati-
zation. Stated simply, institutional theory does not, on its own, invite ques-
tions concerning equity, access, and participation: Who benefits; who bears
the burden of the cost; how are these patterns are deeply rooted in societal
patterns? This is where the work of those who look critically at markets and
education policy helped me enormously.
Thus, I knit together ideas and insights from these two bodies of work
(critical studies on education markets and the new institutionalism) as a way
of beginning to explore the hidden privatization occurring under NCLB and
to trace its equity implications. Current forms of privatization have their ori-
gins in broader political and economic trends, and mirror dynamics in other
sectors, such as health. While linked to broader dynamics, these institutional
influences are not simply done to organizations and people, descending on
them without agency. Individuals and organizations carry, reinterpret, rein-
force, challenge, adapt, and submit to these trends.
While adopting aspects of the institutional lens, I stretch it in order to
better “see and understand” the effects of institutionalizing processes on
schooling inequalities. Metz’s work helped position my thinking about the
links between institutionalized processes and the reproduction of inequalities.
I save mention of her work for last because it reflects the blending of the two
frames that I have described. Metz’ work, in particular, her argument about
the common script of “real schools” provides an intellectual link between
institutionalized processes and the reproduction of schooling inequalities.
She argues that one function of the common script of schooling is the mask-
ing of deeply entrenched inequalities.55

Conclusion
The questions I ask do not have easy answers and the influences are many
layered. Indeed, the more I look, the more complexity I see. For example,
there are certainly places where the market can help education. In addition,
there is a long tradition of institutional racism in public schools that has been
sanctioned in part by government policy. Howard Fuller, who directs the
Black Alliance for Educational Options in Milwaukee, frequently argues that
the current public education system has run out of time. Too many children
in communities of color are lost in government run schools. In some ways,
Fuller’s views on privatization are diametrically opposed to my own, but I
agree with and fully support his conviction that radical change must happen.
My worry is that in seeking this change, we settle for a system—the market
system—whose costs far outweigh the benefits and which offers simplistic
20 • Hidden Markets

answers to complex questions.56 This book represents my effort to continue

thinking through these choices and issues.
In chapter 2, I lay the empirical groundwork for the trend that I am calling
the new privatization. I identify the defining features of the new privatiza-
tion. I look inside the market at the financial and operational activity of the
largest of these firms and how they are drawing on the language of policy
to do their work.
In chapter 3, I consider the political activities driving the new privatiza-
tion. I pay particular attention to the activities of what I term privatization’s
intermediaries. These are individuals and organizations that straddle the
worlds of policy and markets and who help drive the changes described.
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 each explore a different instance or case of the new
privatization. Chapter 4 looks at changes in the market for supplemental
programs, specifically the after-school tutoring market. Chapter 5 examines
the growing market for virtual charter schools. Chapter 6 considers the rise
in contracting for benchmark assessments tied to NCLB and other account-
ability mandates. These cases help illustrate the tensions that are emerging on
the ground as the institutional landscape of education contracting evolves. But
evolves how? In the next chapter, I describe and assess the shifts underway.
 CHAPTER 2
Inside the Market

Education is rapidly becoming a $1 trillion industry, representing 10%

of America’s GNP and second in size only to the health care industry.
Federal and State expenditures on education exceed $750 billion. Edu-
cation companies, with over $80 billion in annual revenues, already
constitute a large sector in the education arena. The education industry
plays an increasingly important role in supporting public education by
meeting the demand for products and services that both complement
and supplement basic education services.1

Education Industry Association

The education industry defines itself as playing “an increasingly important
role in supporting public education” with revenues nearing a trillion dollars.
What is the industry selling? And, what are public school systems buying?
In this chapter, I look inside the emerging education market at the rise of
products and services linked to federal and local testing and accountability
mandates, what I have termed the new privatization and also refer to as
market-based education services.
There has been good work done already on particular segments of the
K–12 industry. This includes studies of for-profit managers of charter schools,
of supplemental education service providers, of educational management
organizations, and test publishers.2 However, in general, few studies have
looked across different segments of the market. They have focused instead
on case studies of individual companies or specific businesses.
I try to take a more integrated approach in this chapter. I look for patterns
in the behaviors of firms selling to school districts as reflected in their financial

21
22 • Hidden Markets

and operational trends. Building on the frame I introduced in chapter 1, I

conceive of firms selling in the market as part of a broader organizational
field, which also includes public agencies and other kinds of organizations.
I consider how different kinds of firms are approaching their work with
school districts in similar ways, and begin in this chapter to identify some
of the emerging issues. In addition, I examine the interactions within this
field in the context of broader economic and political trends, for example
the passage of NCLB and the rise of Internet trade.3
One could take the position that we should leave studying the business
of public education to Wall Street and its financial analysts. However, I
believe that the changes afoot and the level of revenue spent necessitates
that we develop a better understanding of what the market is doing, based
in part on the market’s own reports. Thus, the arguments I make are based
on comparative analysis of public legal documents—specifically statements
filed with the Security and Exchange Commission and that the law requires
of some companies. I also draw here on conversations that I have had with
numerous representatives of the industry.4

From EMO to Specialty Provider

As I noted, education privatization has a long history in the United States.
In the past two decades, much public and academic attention has been
devoted to education management organizations or EMOs. These firms
typically assume full responsibility for all aspects of school operations,
including administration, teacher training, and noninstructional functions
such as building maintenance, food service, and clerical support. However,
education privatization has implications for public schooling far beyond
what is evident in the efforts of today’s EMOs. The current chapter of
education privatization is being written by firms of a different kind, which
have received less attention from the press but cannot be ignored. These
are specialty service providers.5 In contrast to other forms of privatization,
such as vouchers to send children to private schools, under these new forms
of specialty service privatization public school districts in theory maintain
control of funds paid by putting out bids, writing contracts, and overseeing
payment to vendors.
In the mid-1990s, district contracts with specialty service providers
represented a small slice of the privatized sector in education and involved
things like food service, transportation, and driver education. However, since
2003, specialty service providers have become vital players in the K–12 edu-
cation market. By some reports, schools and local governments now spend
approximately $48 billion per year to purchase products and services from
 Inside the Market • 23

the private sector.6 While food service, transportation service, specialized

instruction, and standardized tests account for a large part of that figure, in
the past decade other sales linked to high stakes accountability reforms have
become fast growing segments of the for-profit K–12 industry.7
Specialty services now include after-school tutoring, school improvement
and management services, charter schools, alternative education and special
education services, professional development for teachers and administra-
tors and educational content providers. Some firms in the field are well-
established players in the industry as textbook publishers and test publishers.
This includes firms such as Houghton Mifflin, established in 1832, Kaplan,
established in 1938, and Princeton Review, established in 1981. However,
also represented are many new companies that were established since 1990
and even since 2002. This includes firms such as Educate (2003), K12 (1999),
Blackboard (1997), and Connections Academy (2001). New privatization
firms also represent a range of industries including home entertainment,
Internet services, leisure products, and education services.
The K–12 education market, which was termed sluggish a decade ago by
Wall Street analysts, is exploding through rapid influx of capital investments
and public education revenue. Consider the direction of the trend presented
in Figure 2.1. The figure tracks combined revenue levels in four market seg-
ments described next. The gradual incline (with a slight spike around the
time NCLB was drafted) suggests steady growth with sales in the billions of
dollars annually.

4
($ in billions)

0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Figure 2.1 Growth of new privatization. Source: Estimated based on combined annual reported
revenues of 18 companies representing after school tutoring, test development and preparation, data
management, and analysis and on-line education content providers.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
This book was produced in EPUB format by the Internet Archive.

The book pages were scanned and converted to EPUB format

automatically. This process relies on optical character recognition,
and is somewhat susceptible to errors. The book may not offer the
correct reading sequence, and there may be weird characters, non-
words, and incorrect guesses at structure. Some page numbers and
headers or footers may remain from the scanned page. The process
which identifies images might have found stray marks on the page
which are not actually images from the book. The hidden page
numbering which may be available to your ereader corresponds to
the numbered pages in the print edition, but is not an exact match;
page numbers will increment at the same rate as the corresponding
print edition, but we may have started numbering before the print
book's visible page numbers. The Internet Archive is working to
improve the scanning process and resulting books, but in the
meantime, we hope that this book will be useful to you.

The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to build an Internet

library and to promote universal access to all knowledge. The
Archive's purposes include offering permanent access for
researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the
general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. The
Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software
as well as archived web pages, and provides specialized services for
information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.

Created with hocr-to-epub (v.1.0.0)

The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.58%
accurate

NEW YORK IN THE REVOLUTION AS COLONY AND STATE

VOL. I. A COMPILATION OF DOCUMENTS AND RECORDS FROM THE
OFFICE OF THE STATE COMPTROLLER ALBANY, N. Y. J. B. LYON
COMPANY, PRINTERS 1904
The text on this page is estimated to be only 25.90%
accurate

CONTENTS Page. INTRODUCTORY . 7 INDEX TO

ILLUSTRATIONS 16 THE LINE IST REGIMENT.— Col. Goose Van
Schaick, Lt. Col. Cornelius Van Dyck 17 2ND REGIMENT. — Col.
Goose Van Schaick, Col. Philip Van Cortland, Lt. Col. Peter Regnier,
Lt. Col. Robert Cochran, Lt. Col. Frederick Weissenfels. . 29 3RD
REGIMENT. — Col. James Clinton, Col. Peter Gansevoort, Lt. Col.
James Bruyn 40 4TH REGIMENT. — Col. James Holmes, Col. Henry
B. Livingston, Lt. Col. Pierre Regnier, Lt. Col. Frederick Weissenfels
47 STH REGIMENT. — Col. Lewis Duboys, Lt. Col. James S. Bruyn,
Lt. Col. Marinus Willett, 55 ADDITIONAL REGIMENT (BATTALION). —
Col. James Livingston, Lt. Col. Richard Living ston 60 CONGRESS
REGIMENT. — :;: Col. Edward Antil 60 ADDITIONAL CORPS, GREEN
MOUNTAIN BOYS. — Col. Ethan Allen, Col. Seth Warner 61
ADDITIONAL CORVS.* — Col. Oliver Spencer 62 ADDITIONAL
CORPS.* — Col. Moses Hazcn 63 ARTILLERY, 2ND REGIM EXT. —
Col. John Lamb 63 ARTILLERY, 3RD REGIMENT.* 65 ARTILLERY,
PROVINCIAL. — Capt. Alexander Hamilton's Train .... 65 ARTILLERY
REGIMENTS. — (Not identified). Lt. Col. Ebenezer Stevens 65
CAVALRY, 2ND REGIMENT LIGHT DRAGOONS.* — Col. Sheldon 67
CAVALRY, 4TH REGIMENT LIGHT DRAGOONS.*— Col. Moylan 67
CAVALRY REGIMENTS. — (Not identified). Capt. Jeromimus
Hoogland 67 ARTIFICERS. — Lt. Col. Luther Baldwin* 67 MINERS. —
(Not identified.) Capt. James Gilliland, Capt. Jonathan Lawrence 67
THE LEVIES Col. John Harper 68 Col. Frederick Weissenfels 70 Col.
William Malcom ( 74 Col. Lewis Dubois, Lt. Col. Brinton Paine 77 Col.
Morris Graham, Lt. Col. Benjamin Birdsall, Lt. Col. Henry Livingston
79 Col. Albert Pawling 82 Col. Marinus Willett, Lt. Col. John
McKinstry 87 INDEPENDENT CORPS OF i ,000 MEN 93 THE LINE
AND THE LEVIES ENLISTED MEN (not identified by Regiments) 93 *
Not in the first edition. Ml.85376
The text on this page is estimated to be only 24.98%
accurate

CONTENTS THE MILITIA ALBANY COUNTY: Pago. IST

REGIMENT. — Col. Abraham Cuyler, Col. Jacob Lansing, Jr 97, 221
2ND REGIMENT. — Col. Abraham Wemple 97, 223 3RD REGIMENT.
— Col. Philip P. Schuyler, Lt. Col. Uarent I. Staats 101, 224 4TH
REGIMENT. — Col. Kilian Van Rensselaer, Lt. Col. John H. Beeckman
104, 225 5TH REGIMENT. — Col. Gerrit G. Van den Bergh, Col.
Henry Quackenbos, Lt. Col. Volkert Veeder 107, 226 6TH REGIMENT.
— Col. Stephen John Schuyler, Lt. Col. Henry K. Van Rensselaer, 108,
226 7TH REGIMENT. — Col. Abraham J. Van Alstine, Lt. Col. Philip
Van Alstine. . . 109, 228 STH REGIMENT. — Col. Robert Van
Rensselaer, Lt. Col. Barent I. Staats, Lt. Col. Henry J. Van Rensselaer,
Lt. Col. Asa Waterman in, 229 9TH REGIMENT.— Col. Peter Van
Ness, Lt. Col. David Pratt 116, 230 IOTH REGIMENT. — Col. Morris
Graham, Col. Henry Livingston 117, 231 IITH REGIMENT.— Col.
Anthony Van Bergen, Lt. Col. Cornelius Dubois 119, 232 I2TH
REGIMENT. — Col. Jacobus Van Schoonhoven, Lt. Col. James Gordon
120, 234 I3TH REGIMENT. — Col. John McCrea, Col. Cornelius Van
Veghten 122, 234 I4TH REGIMENT. — Col. John Knickerbacker, Col.
Peter Yates, Lt. Col. John Van Rensselaer 125, 235 I5TH REGIMENT.
— Col. Peter Vroman, Lt. Col. Peter Zielc 128, 236 i6TH REGIMENT.
— Col. John Blair, Col. Lewis Van Woert 130, 236 I7TH REGIMENT. —
Col. William B. Whiting, Lt. Col. Asa Waterman 132, 237
INDEPENDENT COMPANY. — Capt. Petrus Van Gaasbeck 133
CHARLOTTE COUNTY: Col. (Dr.) John Williams 133, 239
CUMBERLAND COUNTY: Col. William Williams 134 COMPANY OF
MINUTE MEN. — Maj. Joab Hoisington, Capt. Joseph Hatch 134
DUTCHESS COUNTY: 2ND REGIMENT. — Col. Abraham Brinkerhoff,
Lt. Col. Jacob Grifren 135, 240 3RD REGIMENT. — Col. John Field,
Col. Andrew Morehouse 139, 241 4TH REGIMENT. — Col. John Frear
141, 243 STH REGIMENT. — Col. William Humfrey, Col. James Van
Deburgh 141, 245 6TH REGIMENT. — Col. Morris Graham, Col.
Roswell Hopkins, Lt. Col. Jacob Griffin 144, 247 7TH REGIMENT. —
Col. Henry Ludenton, Lt. Col. Reuben Ferris 149, 252 ASSOCIATED
EXEMPTS.— Col. Zephaniah Platt, Lt. Col. Rufus Herrick 152
ASSOCIATED EXEMPTS.— Capt. Abraham Schenck 154 REGIMENT
OF MINUTE MEN. — Col. Jacobus Swartwout 154 RANGERS. — Capt.
Ezekiel Cooper 156 ORANGE COUNTY: IST REGIMENT. — Col. Jesse
Woodhull, Lt. Col. Elihu Marvin 157, 253 2ND REGIMENT. — Col. Ann
Hawk Hay, Lt. Col. Gilbert Cooper 157, 254 3RD REGIMENT. — Col.
William Allison, Lt. Col. Benjamin Tuston 161, 255 4TH REGIMENT.
— Col. John Hathorn, Lt. Col. Joseph Hasbrouck, Lt. Col. Henry
Wisner 161, 256 ASSOCIATED EXEMPTS. — Capt. John Wood *68
The text on this page is estimated to be only 24.88%
accurate

CONTENTS 5 SUFFOLK COUNTY: Ptge. IST REGIMENT OF

MINUTE MEN. — Col. Josiah Smith 169 3RD REGIMENT OF MINUTE
MEN. — Col. Thomas Terry 172 REGIMENT OF MINUTE MEN. — Col.
David Mulford 172 TRYON COUNTY: IST REGIMENT. — Col. Samuel
Campbell, Col. Ebenezer Cox, Lt. Col. Samuel clYde • 172, 257 2ND
REGIMENT. — Col. Jacob Klock, Lt. Col. Fetter Wagoner 175, 257
3RD REGIMENT. — Col. FVederick Fisher, Col. Frederick Visscher, Lt.
Col. Yolkert Veeder 179, 258 4TH REGIMENT. — Col. Peter Bellinger
182, 259 STH REGIMENT. — Col. John Harper, Maj. Joseph Harper
184 BATTALION OF MINUTE MEN. — Col. Samuel Campbell 184
ASSOCIATED EXEMPTS. — Capt. Jellis Fonda 185 RANGERS. — Capt.
John Winn 186 RANGERS. — Capt. Christian Getman 186 RANGERS.
— Capt. John Kasselman 186 ULSTER COUNTY: IST REGIMENT. —
Col. Johannes Snyder 187, 259 2ND REGIMENT. — Col. James
McClaghry, Lt. Col. Jacob Newkirk 191, 261 3RD REGIMENT. — Col.
Levi Pawling, Col. John Cantine, Lt. Col. Jacob Hoornbeek 195, 262
4TH REGIMENT. — Col. Johannes Hardenburgh, Lt. Col. Jonathan
Elmendorph, Lt. Col. Johannis Janson 199, 264 INDEPENDENT
COMPANY. — Capt. Samuel Clark 203 LIGHT HORSE.* — Capt.
Salisbury 203 RANGERS.* — Capt. Isaac Belknap 203
WESTCHESTER COUNTY: IST REGIMENT. — Col. Joseph Drake, Col.
James Hamman 204, 266 2ND REGIMENT. — Col. Thomas Thomas,
Lt. Col. Gilbert Budd 207, 266 3RD REGIMENT. — Col. Pierre Van
Cortlandt, Col. Samuel Drake, Lt. Col. Gilbert Drake, Lt. Col. John
Hyatt . . . . . 210, 267 4TH REGIMENT. — Col. Thaddeus Crane 214,
268 ASSOCIATED EXEMPTS. — Lt. Col. Joseph Benedict .... 217
SEPARATE EXEMPTS. — Capt. Jonathan Horton 217
MISCELLANEOUS ORGANIZATIONS : COL. JOHN LASHER. — Lt. Col.
Andrew Stockholm's Regiment 218 COL. JOHN NICHOLSON. — Lt.
Col. John Vischer's Regiment 218 COL. CORNELIUS D. WYNKOOP'S
REGIMENT 219 MAJ. JOHN WHEELOCK'S INDEPENDENT COMPANY
220 ENS. JOHN FONDEY, JR.'S PARTY. 220 CAPT. JOHN A. BRADT'S
RANGERS 220 CAPT. JOHN REILAY'S RANGERS 220 THE MILITIA
(LAND BOUNTY RIGHTS)* THE SEVERAL ORGANIZATIONS are
referred to (by pages) above, in the order of their respective
counties. THE MILITIA (LAND BOUNTY RIGHTS) is grouped on
pages 221-268 * Not in the first edition.
The text on this page is estimated to be only 27.20%
accurate

CONTENTS NAVAL SERVICE Page, PRIVATEERS. — Pay Mr.

Henry Benton, Capt. Robert Castle, Capt. Thomas Cregier, Capt.
Wilkie Dodge, Capt. Thomas Grenell, Capt. John Harrison, Capt.
Christopher Leffingwell, Capt. William Mercier, Capt. Richard Puller,
Capt. William Rogers, Capt. An thony Rutgers, Capt. James Smith,
Capt. Samuel Tudor, Capt. Matthew Van Alstyne, 269 LISTS AND
INDEXES SUNDRY PERSONS whose service is evidenced by original
documents and manuscripts on file in the office of the State
Comptroller, but whose names are not found on the papers of any of
the regular organizations 270 PENSIONERS and Applicants for
Pensions 271 CONTENTS OF THE VOLUMES OF ORIGINAL
DOCUMENTS in the office of the State Comp troller 274 INDEX TO
COMMANDING OFFICERS 276 GENERAL INDEX, EXPLANATIONS 279
Abbreviations Adjt., Adjutant Col., Colonel Insp., Inspector Mr.,
Master Asst., Assistant Com., Commissary Jr., Junior Mu., Muster
Brig., Brigade or Briga- Comr., Commissioner Lieut., Lieutenant Qr.,
Quarter dier Corp., Corporal Lt., Lieutenant Regt., Regiment Capt.,
Captain Dr., Doctor Lt. Col., Lieutenant Serjt., Serjeant Capt. Lt.,
Captain-Lieu- Dy., Deputy Colonel ST., Senior tenant Ens., Ensign
Maj., Major Supt., Superintendent Chap., Chaplain Gen., General
Mar., Marines Surg., Surgeon
The text on this page is estimated to be only 20.67%
accurate

GOVERNOR GEORGE CLINTON

The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.84%
accurate

ARCHIVES OF THE COLONY AND STATE OF NEW YORK IN

THE REVOLUTION [From the First Edition ] DURING my first term of
office as comptroller, the work of putting the old records of the
comptroller's department in systematic order for purposes of easy
reference was undertaken. This work in its progress brought to light
quantities of forgotten papers relating to the services performed by
New York in the Revolutionary War. These papers, long since
detached from their original file packages, were promiscuously
scattered through great masses of old vouchers and files. I realized
at once their great value and importance, and my impression has
been most amply confirmed by the judgment of Col. F. C. Ainsworth,
whose great work in arranging for the United States government the
contribu tions of men made in the various wars by the separate
states and colonies, is well known. Competent men were, therefore,
set at work searching out and arranging these papers, and this task,
though slow and laborious, is believed to have been thoroughly and
intelligently done. The success of this work is very largely due to the
earnest and intelligent interest taken in it by Col. Charles O.
Shepard, and his efforts were greatly assisted by the efficient work
of Mr. William B. Wemple of this office. These papers contain the
muster and pay-rolls of different organizations, and the historic value
and importance of the papers is clearly proved by the fact that they
alone show New York to have furnished nearly one and a half times
the number of troops with which she is usually credited, and adding
to these the names obtained from other reliable sources, the
aggregate is more than twice the number usually credited. General
Knox, first secretary of war, in his report to Congress of the number
of troops furnished by each colony, gave New York credit for but
17,781 men, and this report, copied into our histories, very naturally
has ever since been accepted as correct. We now find positive proof
of the service of 41,633 men. [The corrected number is 43,645. See
additional note in second edition, p. 15.] I therefore submit the
following pages containing the names, rank and organization of
these 41,633 men, whose services can be shown beyond any
question, with the greater satisfaction for believing that a great
historical injustice, reflecting in many minds on New York's patri 
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.87%
accurate

8 NEW YORK IN THE REVOLUTION. otic spirit in the

Revolutionary struggle, will hereby be rectified, and she take her
place, second only to Massachusetts in number of troops furnished,
and, under the circumstances surrounding her, second to none in
lofty patriotism. It is true that lists of names of New York's
Revolutionary soldiers have been heretofore published, but these
were derived almost entirely from other than original sources, the
state treasurer's books of account being the chief source, and their
accuracy, for this reason, has been a matter of grave doubt, and
therefore the results could not be accepted in historical works. All
the names published in this volume are derived from that highest of
sources, the original muster and pay-rolls, and thus the services of
the individual and the aggregate are conclusively shown. Several
thousands of the names, particularly of those belonging to the
regiments of the " Line," "were obtained from rolls on file in the War
Department at Wash ington, through the courtesy of Hon. Daniel S.
Lamont, Secretary of War. And here it may not be inappropriate to
say that Col. Ainsworth, after personal examination of the records of
service found in the comptroller's office, was so well satisfied of their
accuracy and value, that he has had the same transcribed and
placed in the records of the War Department, and the 41,633 names
found here will now appear to the credit of New York in the
government's record of the Revolutionary War, soon to be published.
Nor do the names contained in this voJume in all probability
comprise all of those from New York who performed service in that
great struggle. Cases exist in which records of a full quota of field,
staff and line officers for a regiment have been found, but no
enlisted men. This state of things was proof positive, to any one with
knowledge of military affairs, that a deplorable deficiency in the
records existed. It was not uncommon, as I am credibly informed,
for the officer commanding an organization to retain all the records
relating to his command. Indeed, the records from which the names
of the men in Colonel Gansevort's regiment, Third New York Line,
were obtained, are still in the possession of the descendants of
Colonel Gansevort, and the original record of Alexander Hamilton's
artillery company is in the possession of the New York Historial
Society, to which body we are indebted for its appearance here. Had
New York, as several of the colonies did, published the record of her
Revolutionary service, while the records were still all existing and
their location, and the facts connected with them, were within the
memory of living men, a far more accurate result would have been
reached. As it is, there can be little reasonable doubt that in some
cases records of service have been lost, and that New York can
never show the full number of troops furnished by her in the
struggle. This is almost conclusively shown by the fact that the
papers relating to pensions granted by the state for injuries received
while in service in the Revolu tionary War disclose many names
which do not appear upon any roster in our possession. THE BATTLE
GROUND OF AMERICA. In any consideration of what was
contributed by the separate colonies to the success of the war, it is
proper that the situation in each colony should be taken into
account. New York, more than any other colony, was the battle-
ground of the war, as indeed, from its position, it always will be in
any conflict with Great Britain. The first forts captured from the
English in the war were Ticonderoga and Crown Point, May 10 and
12, 1775; and the first attempt to construct an American navy was
made by Arnold on Lake Champlain in June, I77S- Johnson's last raid
through the Mohawk valley, in which the battle of Johnstown and
various smaller encounters were fought, took place in 1781.
Between those dates were the expedition from New York into
Canada, resulting in the siege and capture of the fort at St. John's,
September 25, 1775, followed by the capture of Montreal, and
ending in the disaster
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.34%
accurate

INTRODUCTORY 9 at Quebec; the expedition to Johnstown,

resulting in the surrender of three hundred armed Scotch
Highlanders, January 19, 1776; battle of Long Island, August 27,
1776; battle of Harlem Plains, September 16, 1776; battle of White
Plains, October 28, 1776; attack upon and capture of Fort
Washington, November 16, 1776; naval battles on Lake Champlain,
October u and 13, 1776; the various manoeuvres of the eventful
year 1777, which preceded the famous battles of that year; the
battle of Bennington, fought on August 16, 1777, on New York soil,
but largely by Vermont boys, and which prevented the British from
receiving needed supplies; the successful defense and sortie from
Fort Schuyler, and the bloody bat tle of Oriskany, August 6, 1777,
which prevented the junction of St. Leger with Burgoyne, and made
the latter's surrender inevitable; the glorious battles of Saratoga,
September 19 and October 7, 1777, leading to Burgone's surrender,
October 17, 1777; the destructive expedition up the Hudson under
Sir Henry Clinton, October, 1777; Johnson's Indian raid through the
Mohawk, Schoharie and Susquehanna valleys, 1778; Sir Henry
Clinton's second expedition up the Hudson, May, 1779; Mad
Anthony's capture of Stony Point with 543 prisoners, July 15, 1779;
the expeditions under Colonels Willett and Van Schaick against
Onondagas, and the horrible retaliatory raids made by the Indians,
1779; Sullivan's expedition against the Indians in 1779, and the
battle near the present site of Elmira; Johnson's raid into the
Mohawk valley, 1780, and Governor Clinton's pursuit; the destruction
of the Canajoharie and Fort Plain settlements by Brant, August,
1780; the extended raid of Sir John Johnson, Brant and Cornplanter,
in the autumn of 1780, with the battle near Stone Arabia, and
Carleton's raid on the upper Hudson, 1780. The surrender of
Cornwallis in 1781 was the practi cal end of the conflict, and the
foregoing list of military movements shows that every year dur ing
the conflict New York was the scene of very active service. The
extensive fighting done within our borders brought into active and
honorable ser vice branches of military which in colonies where no
fighting was done were relieved. Our mili tia were the heroes of
many hotly contested fields. The battle of Oriskany, in its
percentages of killed and wounded, the bloodiest battle of the war,
was won by the militia, and Burgoyne's surrender thereby made
sure. The militia bore a highly honorable part in the evermemorable
battles of Saratoga. But many men undoubtedly performed splendid
service in the emergencies which called ,out the militia and then
retired quietly to their homes, leaving no record of their service
which can now be found. Again, the portions of New York occupied
by the whites Were surrounded on almost all sides by tribes of
hostile Indians, who were incited and led by still more savage
whites. Brant was sometimes humane, but Butler never. The Hurons
had inherited from many preced ing generations the disposition to
make hostile raids upon the territory of their ancient foes, the
Iroquois. At the breaking out of the war the influence of Sir William
Johnson over the tribes of the Iroquois was almost boundless. His
position as Indian agent had brought him into close relations with
these tribes, and this position he seems to have honorably used and
to have succeeded in convincing them that he was their friend. His
mantle, at his death, fell upon his son, Sir John, and his son-in-law,
Col. Guy Johnson, and that they used their influence to the fullest
extent to stir up Indian hostility to the patriotic citizens west of
Albany is a sad page in the history of the war. It required something
more or less than patriotism to induce the frontiersman to leave his
family with the prospect before them of that most horrible of fron
tier experiences, an Indian raid. In the summer of 1776 the control
of New York city, of Long Island and Staten Island and a part of
Westchester county passed into the hands of the British, there to
remain until
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.41%
accurate

io NEW YORK IN THE REVOLUTION after the treaty of

peace, the evacuation taking place November 25, 1783. Fully one-
tenth of the state's population, from which men could be drawn to
recruit the armies, were thus locked up. The population of New York
state in 1790 was 340,120, and of New York city alone, 33,131.
These facts, briefly stated, show New York's trying position in the
Revolutionary War, and confirm what was said at the outset, that in
lofty patriotic endeavor, New York was second to none of the
thirteen colonies. CLASSIFICATION AND PAY OF THE MILITARY
FORCES. The military forces of the Colony and State during the
Revolutionary struggle, were divided into three classes. The Line;
which regiments were in the United States service under General
Washing ton. There were also regiments of artillery and an
organization of " Green Mountain Boys " in the Line. The Levies;
which were drafts from the different militia regiments, and from the
people direct as well, and which could be called upon to serve
outside the State during their entire term. The Militia; which Ithen,
as now, could only be called out of the State for three months at a
time. Of the Line, 9 organizations are traced by these records; of
Levies, 7 organizations; of Militia, 68 organizations; in all 84
organizations. [See additional note in second edition, P- I5-] Records
are found of four privateers in the service and pay of the State —
the schooner " General Putnam," the sloop " Montgomery," the sloop
" Schuyler," and the frigate " Congress." These armed vessels took
many prizes, and records are found of the division of the spoils.
Associated Exempts were a unique class and were authorized by an
act of April 3, 1778. They comprised: "All persons under the age of
sixty who have held civil or military com missions and are not or
shall not be reappointed to their respective proper ranks of office,
and all persons between the ages of fifty and sixty." They could only
be called out " in time of in vasion or incursion of the enemy." The
Militia regiments were designated, first by the colonels' names and
next by their counties, as " Fisher's Regiment, of Tryon County."
Instances crop up, here and there, in which a number was given to a
regiment; as, for instance, " The Sixth Albany County," but it is a
moot question if such was the general practice. Be that as it may,
the name of the colonel is found to be quite sufficient for full
identification. The Militia was called out when wanted; kept as long
as wanted, and the soldiers then sent to their homes. Sometimes a
regiment or a part of a regiment would be called out half a dozen
times in the course of a year, and for half a dozen days at a time,
and again it might not be needed in the entire year. Officers and
men seem to have served in different organizations almost
indiscriminately. At one call, they were in one regiment or company,
and at another call, in another regiment or company. It is, therefore,
very difficult to keep trace of them on the different pay-rolls or "
pay-books," as they were sometimes called. Nepotism, or family influ
ence, was most marked, and some regiments contained as many as
five and seven officers of the same family. (See Colonel Brinkerhoff's
regiment, and ,the Millers', in Colonel Thomas' regiment.)
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.43%
accurate

INTRODUCTORY II Counties were divided into districts, and

the colonel of the regiment in each district was given almost
unlimited jurisdiction in military matters. He was required to see that
every male between the ages of sixteen and fifty was enrolled. Later,
the age limit was extended to sixty. If an able-bodied man, he must
serve when " warned " under penalty of fine and im prisonment; but
if incapacitated, he must contribute toward furnishing and equipping
another man — any person furnishing a substitute being exempt for
the time that substitute served. Quakers, Moravians and United
Brethren were enrolled, but exempted from service upon pay ment
of money, which varied in amount as the war progressed until, in
1780, they were obliged to pay £160 per year. One miller to each
grist mill, three powder makers to each powder mill, five men to
each furnace, three journeymen in each printing office, and one
ferryman to each public ferry, were also exempt. Each soldier must
present himself armed, and with a blanket, a powder-horn and a
flint, and sometimes even a tomahawk was required. All officers in
the cities of New York, Albany and Schenectady were ordered to
wear their swords during divine service under a penalty of twenty
shillings. Rum, sugar and tea were regular rations, and the amount
was gauged by the rank. A major-general was deemed to require,
and was allowed eac'i month, four gallons of rum, six pounds of
sugar, and half a pound of tea. A brigadier-general, three gallons of
rum, four pounds of sugar, and six ounces of tea. A colonel, a
lieutenant-colonel, and a major, two and one-half gallons of rum,
and the same amount of sugar and tea. A chaplain, ditto as to sugar
and tea, but only two gallons of rum. The scale was continued until
a noncommissioned officer and a private received one pound of
sugar, two ounces of tea, and one pound of tobacco, but no rum. A
colonel's pay was $75 per month, or one York £ per day; a
lieutenant-colonel's pay was $60 per month; a major's pay was $50
per month; a captain's pay was $40 per month; an adjutant's pay
was $40 per month; a lieutenant's pay was $26 2-3 per month; an
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookname.com