Now you're talking
by Tom Sullivan
"Folks, they want to destroy public education," the state Senate minority leader told a room full of supporters last year. He said it as though he had just figured it out.
Since the Republican sweep in 2010, Democrats have spent so much time in state capitols defending against one frontal assault after another coming from yards away. They tend not to notice troop movements on the fringes of the political battlefield. Is The Village any different?
Outside the bubbles, it's been clear for years that destroying public education is where charters, vouchers, and online schools are taking us under the guise of helping the disadvantaged. But one rarely sees it put so bluntly as this week. The WaPo's Valerie Strauss quotes the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce's vice president of public policy and economic development:
“The business community is the consumer of the educational product. Students are the educational product. They are going through the education system so that they can be an attractive product for business to consume and hire as a workforce in the future.”
Yup. Like Robocop, your kids are product. Maybe. Allstate CEO Thomas Wilson explained that globalization means, “I can get [workers] anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business ... American businesses will adapt.” So unless the little darlings offer some upside to the bottom line, they add no value. Why should the 1% pay to educate American children when other nations will pay to educate theirs for us? And besides, how much education do waiters and gardeners really need, anyway?
OTOH, if corporations could tap the unrealized potential of that government-guaranteed, recession-proof, half-trillion-dollar stream of public tax dollars states "waste" each year on not-for-profit, K-12 public education? The Big Enchilada? Now you're talking.
Which is why, as the Education Opportunity Network explains, charters don't need ad campaigns. They need regulation. There are some good "mom and pop" charters out there, sure, but they are just small fry, bait for the bigger fish. The Progressive reports:
There's been a flood of local news stories in recent months about FBI raids on charter schools all over the country.
From Pittsburgh to Baton Rouge, from Hartford to Cincinnati to Albuquerque, FBI agents have been busting into schools, carting off documents, and making arrests leading to high-profile indictments.
It's almost as if charters have become what the Progressive calls "a racket."
Over the last decade, the charter school movement has morphed from a small, community-based effort to foster alternative education into a national push to privatize public schools, pushed by free-market foundations and big education-management companies. This transformation opened the door to profit-seekers looking for a way to cash in on public funds.
In 2010, Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. has been an ALEC member, declared K-12 public education "a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed."
The transformation has begun.
"Education entrepreneurs and private charter school operators could care less about innovation," says [associate professor of education policies at Georgia State University, Kristen] Buras. "Instead, they divert public monies to pay their six-figure salaries; hire uncertified, transient, non-unionized teachers on-the-cheap; and do not admit (or fail to appropriately serve) students who are costly, such as those with disabilities."
Hide yer children. And yer wallets.
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