New data: Conservatives & moguls spending huge sums to turn schools into Wall Street profit centers

[kpete]

Chris Christie’s demented “you people” movement: The right’s school-for-cash obsession
New data proves conservatives and moguls are spending huge sums to turn schools into Wall Street profit centers
BY DAVID SIROTA

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As I have previously reported, five years ago, the school system here was turned into a Wall Street profit center and prospective campaign contribution engine by then-school superintendent Michael Bennet. Bennet had zero experience in education policy when he came into the job, but he did have vast business connections from his tenure as a corporate raider for Anschutz, the right-wing billionaire. He put that to work when in 2008 he orchestrated a pension financing deal that made Wall Street banks so much money and cost the school system so much cash it became a national cautionary tale on the front page of the New York Times. Bennet, though, was long gone by the time the destruction was evident. Within a year of the original deal, he was on his way to getting handsomely repaid for his work, with the financial industry that his scheme enriched conveniently serving as one of his top U.S. Senate campaign contributors.

The school budget crisis this scheme exacerbated has empowered billionaires’ foundations to leverage their wealth in the name of corporatist ideology. With Denver schools especially strapped for cash in the wake of Bennet’s scheme, the Waltons, the Gateses and others have in the Denver Public School system a perfect target. The schools’ budget crisis makes local schools particularly willing to trade education policymaking – say, tearing up a school’s union contract – for the much-needed operating cash that foundations provide. Under the rule of this oligarchy, Denver has for years now been on a pro-charter-school, anti-union tear. Despite data showing that such ideology has often produced terrible academic results in Denver, the corporate “reforms” have nonetheless been loyally backed by the city’s corruption-plagued school board. Even by modern standards, that oligarchy-serving corruption is breathtaking, as Denver school board members moonlight in jobs that give them personal financial interests in anti-public-school “reforms.” As I recently reported:

(The school board’s) current president is paid by a private education foundation whose stated goal is to put more public money into privately run charter schools. It’s immediate past president resigned to go work for a private education foundation that does business with the school district. Another of its board members runs a foundation that gets money from the school district. A previous board member went from the board to a run a group looking to bring more corporate influence into the school system. And now another leading candidate for a board vacancy, the pro-voucher former lieutenant governor Barbara O’Brien, says that even if she wins the board seat, she will ignore concerns about self-dealing and remain the paid executive director of a pro-charter foundation to which the school board gives public money.

All of this has created a political climate where corruption and conflicts of interest are just right out in the open. In this local oligarchy, nobody even tries to hide what’s really going on. There simply is no shame anymore – nor is there any pretense surrounding what education politics is now really all about. To see that in action, consider this year’s school board candidate Michael Johnson.




http://www.salon.com/2013/11/04/chris_christies_demented_you_people_movement_the_rights_school_for_cash_obsession/

[gopiscrap]

1. yup and they'll fuck over the teachers in the process

[silverweb]

2. The future, if not reversed.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]You are no longer a citizen; you are a consumer.
You are no longer an employee; you are an exploitable resource/production unit.
You are no longer a student; you are a resource/production unit in training.
Predatory capitalism's creed: Profits uber alles.

[Brigid]

3. Corporatism is absolutely destroying this country.