Remember, money “invested” by hedge funders in education “reform” almost doubles its value in tax credits over ten years! So when they start talking about how much they care about the kids, keep that in mind:
Remember how some of us were saying that as soon as the “shock doctrine” of manufactured budget crises put the fork in any hope of reviving Philadelphia’s public schools in any way, that the vulture capitalists would be diving in to pick over the carcass?
Don’t bother, they’re here. In fact, they’re everywhere, they’re everywhere! When we weren’t looking, someone apparently decreed that Monday, Sept. 30, 2013, shall be hereby known as Crush A Teacher Day in the city of Philadelphia.
It only takes $50,000 to participate!
On Monday, wealthy donors interested in the future of public education will gather for a two-day conference at the Union League: “All of the Above: How Donors can Expand a City’s Great Schools.”
Attendance is restricted to those who make $50,000 in charitable donations per year. One might hope, given the apocalyptic state of Philly’s resource-starved public schools, that they are here to plot a campaign to reverse deep state budget cuts — or, at the very least, to cut a check to rehire some laid-off school counselors.
Instead, they will meet with self-described school-reform activists who want to move yet more students out of the same “government schools” they have defunded and into privately-managed charters — and even straight-up private schools. The entirely broke School District of Philadelphia estimates that each student who attends a charter costs it an additional $7,000. That existential fiscal challenge posed by charter expansion will not, it seems, be on the agenda. Nothing about the sector’s rampant corruption and lack of state or local oversight either.
The cast of characters includes some of the usual suspects: Jeremy Nowak, who caught a fever during his brief tenure as head of the William Penn Foundation, and the only way he can scratch it is with more cowbell corporate education reform, and something that calls itself Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust), that is basically funded these days by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.
Once again. What is Michael Nutter? Is he a fictional character or a real person? Does he live in Philly or on the planet Hashish? Clearly he’s the well paid gatekeeper of the 1%.