I am sick at the privatization of our public schools – and under a Democratic president, no less. Jane Hamsher:
A couple of weeks ago, Dave Dayen wrote about a special tax credit that has been allowing hedge funds to make enormous profits from building charter schools. Which, of course, takes money out of public offers and puts it in the pockets of Wall Street profiteers. Juan Gonzalez has been covering this at the New York Daily news, and as he told Amy Goodman, “The result is, you can put in ten million dollars and in seven years double your money.”
Paul Rosenberg wrote a very good post about the practical and philosophical reasons that underpin the conservative desire to dismantle public education:
- The attack on public education itself is a prime example of the attack on social democratic ideas and institutions…this serves to discredit public education, take money away from the public education system, and take money and jobs away from public employees and their unions.
- The siphoning off of certain students into separate learning environments is part of the conservative agenda for inscribing hierarchical differences in society.
- The creation of lucrative money-making opportunities funnels public money to more wealthy members of society.
- The creation of private governance structures further strengthens the power of unaccountable conservative elites, weakening democratic control.
- The private governance structures in turn empower crony networks that can also serve as organizing foundations for further consolidation of conservative power.
The government has set up a series of financial incentives that are loaded in the direction of dismantling public education (as well as the teachers’ unions). The ability of public schools to provide quality education will decrease with additional teacher layoffs, even as hedge funds are financing campaigns for the expansion of charter schools, which they are making a killing from.
The destruction of the public education system has been a long-term ambition of the Heritage Foundation. They are, predictably, opposing the money for teachers’ salaries.
Well put. It’s also worth noting that our middle-class suburban school districts do as well as any in the world; it’s the schools trying to educate our poorest children that have achievement numbers that bring our averages down. And we have a LOT of poor children, lots more than other industrialized nations. IIRC, something like a quarter of our children live in poverty.
So the “problem” with our schools is poverty, but you can’t expect the masters of the universe to want to ameliorate that.
I’ve thought for a while that the problems in education are a product of inequality, rather than education being a solution to inequality.
Ok, but we’ve got to keep mind that education funding traditionally comes primarily from property taxes, i.e., homeowners and businesses. So, if folks are losing their homes and businesses while, at the same time, property values are falling, where’s the money going to come from to fund public education? Private investment, of course. Sad, but a reality in today’s tough economy.
Dandy, this push to privatize education started years ago and didn’t let up, not even during the boom years for property taxes. The reason you’re hearing about it now is that this effort is achieving critical mass.
The private investment money you speak of is, in the end, tax money. Schools do not make a profit, the privatized schools just launder tax money.
When you say it’s “sad reality,” you’re just repeating back the propoganda.
One thing the federal government could do right now to help schools financially is rescind the NCLB test requirements. Buying those tests is expensive. But Obama and Arne Duncan think we should double the amount of tests and do ’em twice a year.
Do you think the establishment of an hierarchical school system is the end result, or just a lucky side effect of the action of greed? Or, which is the cause and which the effect?
Andrew Cuomo is for more charter schools and he also declared that he wants to take on the municipal unions.
What the hell is going on with today’s Democrats? Are they all trying to destroy unions? Drive labor out of the Dem Party?
The ads against teachers and teachers’ unions in the NYC area show Bill Clinton as agreeing with this approach: Fewer teachers in unions; more charter schools.
What is going on in the nation?
Obama’s a Democrat?
Randall Wray, an economist who spoke at the Counter-“Let Them Eat Cat Food” Teach in in DC late last month, pointed out that it’s been known for decades that when the poor have jobs they — get this! — get out of poverty! What a concept!
And the government should be doing that, ensuring full employment in this nation.
So many problems stem from our decision to have a “reserve army” of the unemployed to keep inflation down. Wrong approach, bad thinking.
There will transcripts of the speeches posted soon…ish.
Well put. It’s also worth noting that our middle-class suburban school districts do as well as any in the world; it’s the schools trying to educate our poorest children that have achievement numbers that bring our averages down. And we have a LOT of poor children, lots more than other industrialized nations. IIRC, something like a quarter of our children live in poverty.
So the “problem” with our schools is poverty, but you can’t expect the masters of the universe to want to ameliorate that.
…It’s not quite as common, but there are suburban charter schools for the gifted and misfit; my younger siblings went to one after our wealthy suburban school system (they had the distinction of being called racist BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE) messed up all three of us really badly. The school wasn’t a money-laundering scheme. It was excellent at first, and it took a bunch of kids who were flunking out. The biggest problem was the inability to plot with the same economies of scale as the wider system, or even guarantee that its teachers would have a school in a couple of years.
I don’t think it’s a workable solution. I’m a big state-wide socialized person myself. Another alternative that’s being explored, with plenty of passive aggression from public school officials, is community-college matriculation on a concurrent or full-time basis. That saved me, and eventually my brother and sister.
It seemed like my high school did okay by the quarter of its school body that was white, wealthy, and suburban, but there were still big problems. It was a punitive, ugly, stifling place. There was plenty of disgusting education/cost-cutting, usually on the backs of the poorer, non-white students. It was an apartheid school, and it treated poorer, non-white students as though they had no right to public resources or a decent education. And the police were everywhere, justifying their paychecks and harassing kids.
I’m not sure that, at this point, the state systems are much more immune from this disgusting corporatist attitude towards public services. It’s not just that racism and classism are having an impact on a burdened system, either. Racism and classism are big problems in schools, with administrators and teachers. I’m also not sure that defending a system that cheerfully fucks over the most vulnerable is such a great way to get people to stop grasping at privatized straws.