The war against workers has existed all throughout human history. In order for the relatively small number of people in power to remain there in relative safety (and wealth!), they have to pit worker against worker. You are a pawn in this war. For anyone who wants to debate privatization, unionization, pensions, tax and trade policies, etc., you had better be VERY informed about what is driving the rhetoric. It will affect YOU, and not in a good way.
Here’s a start:
“No national accounting
Because of the unregulated, local nature of charters, reporting to national studies is largely voluntary. The amount of central analysis is limited to that performed by universities or other nongovernmental bodies. “There’s an awful lot of diversity in these companies [EMOs],” points out Henry Levin, a professor of education at Columbia University. “And most of them are proprietary, so we really don’t know how they’re operating,” he concluded in a ProPublica investigative article.[4]
Western Michigan University has sponsored studies based on self-reporting. A 2010 report, “Equal or Fair? A Study of Revenues and Expenditures in American Charter Schools,” shows charters top heavy with administration at the expense of instruction.[5]
According to this study, charter schools spend 54.8 percent of their operating budgets on instruction compared with 60.3 percent at traditional public schools. For-profit schools spend even less on instruction. In Michigan, the average drops to 44.8 percent. A random search online, for example, brings up Crescent Academy in Southfield, Michigan, which leases all of its employees and spends only 42.67 percent on instruction.
National statistics in “Equal or Fair?” show student support services are even more unbalanced—at $858 per year for public schools and an average of $517 for charters, with for-profits even lower at $366 less per pupil than nonprofit charters. On the other end of the scale, the charters are spending considerably more on administration than their public school rivals.”
“The first national charter school study was conducted in 2009 by CREDO at Stanford, and the co-funders of the study (the Walton Foundation and Pearson) were not enamored by the results. So bad were they for charter school fans that the study, though given skimpy coverage by the LA Times, was never reported by WaPo or the NYTimes, and received minimal coverage from one news magazine, U. S. News and World Report, which obviously did not get the memo:
June 17, 2009 12:58 PM ET | Zach Miners | Permanent Link | Print
On average, charter schools are not performing as well as their traditional public-school peers, according to a new study that is being called the first national assessment of these school-choice options. The study, conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, compared the reading and math state achievement test scores of students in charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia—amounting to 70 percent of U.S. charter school students—to those of their virtual “twins” in regular schools who shared with them certain characteristics. The research found that 37 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were significantly below what students would have seen if they had enrolled in local traditional public schools. And 46 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were statistically indistinguishable from the average growth among their traditional public-school companions. That means that only 17 percent of charter schools have growth in math scores that exceeds that of their traditional public-school equivalents by a significant amount.”
“For people so concerned with keeping the government’s hands out of their pockets, the ALEC documents reveal that they have spent quite a lot of effort on getting their hands into yours. The Center for Media and Democracy describes ALEC’s public education efforts as an attempt to turn education into a “private commodity rather than a public good.” Charter school expansion is at the top of the agenda, and ALEC-inspired charter school bills have passed this spring in several states. Charter school chains are poised to move in. Public subsidy of charter companies like White Hat and Imagine Schools means private profit not only from state tax monies but also from complex sale-leaseback arrangements on the valuable real estate, private development subsidized at public expense or acquired through eminent domain.
The impulse among conservatives to privatize everything involving public expenditures – schools included – is no longer just about shrinking government, lowering their taxes and eliminating funding sources for their political competitors. Now it’s about their opportunity costs, potential profits lost to not-for-profit public-sector competitors. It’s bad enough that government “picks their pockets” to educate other people’s children. But it’s unforgivable that they’re not getting a piece of the action. Now they want to turn public education into private profits too.
Why are millionaires and billionaires targeting public education? For the same reason banksters pimped mortgage loans. For the same reason Wall Street wanted to privatize Social Security. For the same reason Willie Horton robbed banks.
Answer this question: What is the largest portion of the budget in all 50 states?”
“It is a vicious cycle – with ALEC and Lumina Foundation at the center. ALEC pushes legislation and policy which imposes draconian cuts to public higher education funding. Lumina lends financial and policy support to the agenda – and positions itself to step in with a “Four Step Plan” to fill the void. Lumina offers a brilliant talking point – “follow our plan, and more people will get college degrees, which means more people will get jobs…because (as everyone knows) people with degrees get hired more than people without.”
While these are lofty goals and wonderful ideals (for education is truly the cornerstone of democracy); with Lumina, the devil is in the details. There is a clear push in this agenda to privatize and take an opportunistic approach to a continuing economic recession (or as Paul Krugman more accurately says, depression). Educational Foundations such as Lumina and the Gates Foundation are taking on a greater roll in developing policy, as opposed to direct awards – and it is having an enormous effect, again, because of the draconian cuts being endured by public colleges and universities.”
