How Wall Street Power Brokers Are Designing the Future of Public Education as a Money-Making Machine

[unhappycamper]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20567-how-wall-street-power-brokers-are-designing-the-future-of-public-education-as-a-money-making-machine



How Wall Street Power Brokers Are Designing the Future of Public Education as a Money-Making Machine
Wednesday, 11 December 2013 09:33
By Anna Simonton, AlterNet | Op-Ed

Given that Arthur Rock has a net worth of $1 billion, lives in California and spends his time heaping money on tech startups (with the mantra, “Get in, get out,” as his guide), a local school board race in Atlanta, Ga. seems an unlikely candidate for his attention.

~snip~

The biggest question facing the board of newcomers is to what degree they will embrace charter schools. Last year, Georgia voters passed a constitutional amendment that enabled the creation of a state-appointed commission authorized to bypass local and state school boards in approving new charter schools. Critics say the measure passed because the text on the ballot, written by governor Nathan Deal, referenced “parental involvement” and “student achievement,” but not the specific authorities of the commission. In this climate, APS, which already has the most charter schools of any Georgia school district, will only avoid becoming the next laboratory for corporate education reform with significant pushback from the new school board.

That’s where Arthur Rock comes in. And a lot of other rich people, too.

Rock is not the only name on the reports with financial power and a less than obvious connection to Atlanta Public Schools. Greg Penner of the Walmart empire, Dave Goldberg of the Sheryl Sandberg empire (they’re married), and Kent Thiry of the DaVita kidney dialysis empire (it sounds inglorious, but he pulls in $17 million annually), are among the names that had some Atlantans scratching their heads this election season.

[BlueStreak]

1. Charters Schools is the biggest scam that nobody's talking about

Right up there with the for-profit prisons.

These scams are supported strongly by BOTH parties.

Here's a recent article talking about Ohio's schools:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/09/01/charter-schools-failed-promise.html

The charters were doing so poorly that the state stopped publishing the figures "to give them time to adjust", don't you know?

And understand that in almost every case, the charters end up receiving MUCH more money per student than the public districts. Sometimes that is in the direct funding formula. But there are also some other nice tricks, such as:

1) In Indiana, there is a law that says if a public district has a surplus building, they must lease it to a charter for $1.00 per year -- and the public district is still responsible for all the building maintenance. That is a direct transfer of millions of dollars from the public district to the charters.

2) In Indiana, the funding formula pays schools based on their enrollment as of October 1. HOWEVER, charters can dump students back into the public district ANY TIME they want to. They call this "counseling out." The game, obviously, is to keep all students into October 1, then after that, systematically identify the students that are either discipline problems or likely to lower the school's academic numbers, and counsel them back to the public district. The public district has to accept them and doesn't get a penny for those students that school year.

But why do charters suck so badly? Why, given all these advantages, are they still failing at the rate of about 15% a year and failing to produce any academic results superior to the public districts? Well, it is the profits. The law in Indiana says that charters only have to employ 50% of the faculty with teaching certificates. Yes, you read that right. Basically they can and do hire a substantial part of their staff at little more than minimum wage. The profits demand noting less.

[Turbineguy]

2. They are probably working on derivative children.

Then the schools can charge 1000 times as much from local governments.

[snot]

3. K&R'd & bookmarked.