User:Larsa22/For-profit education

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What exactly is For-Profit Education and how did it get its start?

An Overview of For-Profit Education

For-Profit schools are institutions that are owned and operated by a private company or business. In recent years, for-profit education has shown an increase in its popularity among students. "Substantial evidence indicates thats the for-profit education industry is growing dramatically, far outpacing the growth in the economy".

For-profit schools rely on the expenses paid by their students in order to make a profit. For-Profit schools "operate at lower cost per pupil than public schools do, but also have some expenses that public schools do not have, such as marketing expenses and taxes". Public schools do not require its students to pay for these expenses and for tuition to attend, because they are government funded institutions. The popularity of students choosing to attend for-profit institutions has increased substantially throughout the years. "The growing realization that private schools operating in a competitve environment are far more efficient adds to the public willingness to shift public funds to subsidize private education".

According to the Encyclopedia, for-profit education came around due to "the growing discontent with public schools that began in the 1960s, but an experiment in performance contracting, the hiring by public schools of private companies to provide instruction with remuneration dependent on student achievement, was deemed ineffective in a 1972 government report". This led to many groups of parents and students calling out for more educational reforms. This, in turn, led media entrepreneur, Christopher Whittle, to announce a plan for a multibillion-dollar chain of 150 to 200 private schools, which, he declared, would provide better instruction at lower per-pupil cost than public schools".

United States

There are two types of for-profit schools. The first major category of for-profit schools is post-secondary institutions which operate as businesses, receiving fees from each student they enroll. The second type of for-profit schools, which is less prevalent in the United States, are K–12 private schools which often operate as businesses.

However, in many public schools, private and for-profit forces still exist. One such force is known as an education management organization (EMO); these are Management Organizations for primary and secondary educational institutions. EMOs work with school districts or charter schools, using public funds to finance their operations. They typically offer schools back-office services, but may also provide teacher training, facility support, and other management related services. In the 2018-19 school year, roughly 10% of charter schools contracted with a for-profit EMO, while about 30% contracted with a non-profit charter management organization (CMO).

While supporters of EMOs argue that the profit motive encourages efficiency, this arrangement has also drawn controversy and criticism.

Kevin Carey of the New America Foundation said in a 2010 column in The Chronicle of Higher Education that "For-profits exist in large part to fix educational market failures left by traditional institutions, and they profit by serving students that public and private nonprofit institutions too often ignore." He also noted that "There's no doubt that the worst for-profits are ruthlessly exploiting the commodified college degree. But they didn't commodify it in the first place."

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While there are many higher education for-profit schools, another area of For-profit education that is prevalent in the United States are Religious based K-12 schools.

United States

Religious For-Profit Education (K-12)

The number of Catholic School enrollees in the United States went “from 5.2 million students in the mid 1960s to about 1.8 million today”. Affordability is one of the many factors in the decline of Catholic School enrollment. Due to the Constitution restrictions, Catholic Schools do not receive federal support. Because of this, Catholic Schools budgets are comprised from donations and out of pocket tuition and fees. “As parents foot most of the bill for their children’s education in Catholic schools, rising tuition costs due to a growing reliance on lay teachers and staff have led many schools to be out of reach for the poor and the middle class. This is the case even though teachers in Catholic schools often work for lower pay than in public schools.”

Wodon’s research includes Catholic schools in regard to the following data: geographic, religious (and non-religious), income, race, political affiliation, etc. In addition, he gives statistics of Democrats and Republicans on their views of Catholic Schools, non-Catholic religious schools, public schools, charter schools and magnet schools. In addition, information is reviewed regarding religious affiliation (and the extent of their practice in their faith) in reference to each of these school options.

There have been many changes in Private Schools across the United States in the last 20 years. The National Center for Education Statistics produces Characteristics of Private Schools in the United States articles which provides data that can be used to compare and contrast changes within Private Schools. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was created in 1988 to provide an improved method of private school data collection since there was not a consistent, reliable source of data at that time.

According to the 2003-2004 report, in the United States there were 28,384 private schools 5,122,772 students and 425,238 full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers.  In 2017-2018, there were 32,461 private schools in the United States, 4,898,154 students and 482,325 FTE teachers.  In 2019-2020, the United States had 30,492 private schools, 4,652,904 students and 481,200 FTE teachers. In addition, the reports show the number of religious or nonsectarian orientation of schools in the United States. While Roman Catholic private schools are listed as the most predominately known of the religious private schools, there are many others that need to be noted and recognized. The schools with religious orientation listed in the 2019-2020 report include Roman Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, Amish, Assembly of God, Baptist, Brethren, Calvinist, Christian (unspecified), Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of God in Christ, Church of the Nazarene, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Friends, Greek Orthodox, Islamic, Jewish, Latter Day Saints, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Other Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Seventh-Day Adventist, and Other. In 2019-2020, the Religious Orientation schools account for 20,241 of the schools in the United States (66.4%) and nonsectarian schools account for 10,251 (33.6%). In the 2017-2018 report, the percentages stayed the same between the Religious Orientation school (21,548 schools at 66.4% of all schools) and Nonsectarian (10,913 schools at 33.6%).

In Religious Education in the U.S., Matt Donnelly (Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2021) the history of religious schools in the United States is studied along with exploration of the terms and understandings of religious education. However, in terms of for profit schools, the history of religious schools is relevant as opposed to religious education (which is mostly associated with Sunday schools or other Bible story based lessons on a religious campus). Donnelly recognizes that the religious education is not something born in the United States, as it has been in European since the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church was the primary source of education. “Religious schools have existed in what later became the United States since the Spanish missionary schools, and later they expanded under the influence of English Protestant settlers and missionaries. While they were supplanted in terms of numbers by the onset of the public school in the nineteenth century, religious schools continue to serve nearly ten percent of American K-12 students. They provide an alternative educational resource for millions of American parents who either wish to reinforce the values they teach their children at home, or offer their children what they perceive to be a more challenging academic program.”

           For-profit schools were primarily religious schools historically. “Because the United States was primarily a Protestant country up through the beginning of the nineteenth century, the public schools that were established to provide a free education to all children often provided some religious education as well. But as the United States became more religiously diverse, public schools came to understand that it was not politically or socially expedient to promote one set of theological beliefs over any other. Still, as millions of immigrants from Catholic countries such as Ireland, Italy, and Poland poured into the country in the 1830s and 1840s, the Catholic Church still perceived the public schools as Protestant enough to create separate Catholic schools for the children of Catholic immigrants.” However, Donnelly notes that more recently in history, that the specific denominations of conservative Christian schools have taken a lesser role against a broader statement of faith that is not necessarily specific to any denomination.

To clarify, many articles and documents use the term Catholic Schools and Parochial schools interchangeably. From the encyclopedia, the definition of Parochial schools which are schools that relate to the church. We see through this the history of these schools for the Catholic church. Catholic private schools in the United States came about after Catholics started compounding in the United States and they found that the public schools did not meet the expectations that they wanted to be instilled and transferred to their children. From this, the Catholic Private Schools in the United States were developed.