Supporting or Opposing Privatization in Education: Teachers' Attitudes and Positions of Power in Israeli Schools

Abstract

The consequences of neoliberal policies in education are controversial. Based on the micro-political approach, this study had two aims: (1) to examine teachers' attitudes toward the effect of privatization on inequality and educational improvement; and (2) to examine the link between teachers' positions of power in school and their attitudes toward privatization. A questionnaire was administered to high school teachers in Israel. Three groups of teachers were defined: supporters, opponents, and those who held mixed attitudes toward privatization. The findings revealed that the controversy regarding privatization reflected the power relations within schools, thus limiting teachers' ability to counter this policy.

Notes

1. In Israel most students (72%) attend schools that are fully maintained by the state and partially supported and financed by the local authorities. The rest (27%) go to schools that are partially (55–65%) financed by the state or to private schools that barely receive financial support from the state. The number of private secular schools is estimated at 150–200 (Schwarz, 2010).

2. The effort of school principals to contract out by involving private companies in the school, and by soliciting private resources (e.g. parents) for it as forms of privatization, was reported by other high-ranking educational administrators, who answered two open questions: What is the meaning of privatization in the educational system? How is privatization expressed in schools?

3. For an example of the position of unions against privatization see R. Erez (2005), the Head of the Teachers' union, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnnLyDHl1QI (Hebrew). In Israel, there are two distinct unions, one for elementary school and one for high school teachers. There are no published accurate figures about the number of teachers affiliated to teachers' unions. However, once entering the teaching occupation, teachers are required, almost automatically, to join the union. A general estimation is that more than 90% of the teachers are union members. For the individual teachers, joining the union hardly represents a political or ideological view. Further, teachers join a particular teacher's union depending on the school level in which they work. As such, teachers who work in high schools are all affiliated to the same union so that teachers do not vary in their membership.

4. The Israeli educational system is a composite of three different state educational sectors: Jewish secular, Jewish religious, and Arab. Each sector has particular characteristics and serves a distinct population.

5. Interviews were intended to be conducted with all five school principals. However, three refused to take part in the study; it transpired that the issue of privatization was awkward for them.

6. As there is hardly any systematic database or research regarding teachers' union involvement in school, I asked two teachers (in November 2011) at two different schools included in the present study about the extent to which the teachers' union is involved in school and affects schoolwork. Both teachers reported that the teachers' union is hardly present at school. As said by one senior teacher, “the teachers' union in our school is limited to nonexistent … [there is] really no influence, there is no feeling that behind us there is a serious professional union.”

7. In Israel there are seven districts that are different in their teachers' characteristics. Thus, teachers in the city being examined are compared to the relevant district to which they are affiliated.

8. The questionnaire items were formulated based on the interviews with the school principals and on the answers provided by high-ranking educational administrators to two questions (see Note 2). Based on the pilot results, some items were excluded and others were modified.

9. In a preliminary analysis, this group was divided into two: teachers who held that privatization could improve education but increase inequality, and those who held the opposite, namely privatization would not improve education but would not increase inequality. That is, privatization may not improve education and not increase inequality. Conducting a Scheffé post-hoc test showed that the above two groups were not significantly different in all the variables examined. Thus, teachers with mixed attitudes appeared to be similar in their personal and occupational characteristics and attitudes to leadership.

10. The two variables were based on Bolman and Deal's Four Framework Approach to Leadership (1991) and items developed based on Sergiovanni educational force (1984; see also Cheng, 2002, 2005). For the purpose of this research, two high school teachers and two university experts of educational leadership were asked to identify items that referred directly to teacher-principal relations and that indicated school principal's control of teachers' work or empowerment. The items that were accepted by all four “judges” were selected to construct both scales.

11. Very few teachers (3.8%) had less than five years of teaching experience. Further, seniority was originally measured as an ordinal scale as follow: 1, up to 5 years; 2, 6–10; 3, 11–15; 4, 16–20; 5, 21–25; 6, and 26 and more. This was done due to ethical concerns in keeping the anonymity of the respondents. As we had for each teacher their school affiliation and several of their work characteristics, obtaining very detailed data could identify a particular teacher. Based on statistical considerations, seniority was further defined as a set of dummy variables.

12. The percentage of females in the teachers' population who worked in the same school district was 78.4%; about 23.6% had a master's or a PhD degree, and an average of 18.1 years' experience. In the sample the average was 16.9. Furthermore, in the sample the percentage of novice (1 to 5 years) teachers was smaller than in the whole population (3.8% and 11.4% respectively; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2009).

13. The square of the canonical correlation.

14. In 2007–2008 such debates took place in Israeli elementary schools. In each individual school, teachers and administrators had to choose and decide whether or not to join a new school reform (named “New Horizon”).