The Education Wars

The destruction of the public school system continues unabated, regardless of whether we have a "Democrat" in the White House who buys into think tank propaganda. All kinds of corporate money are being funneled into charter schools, which are private schools financed by the taxpayers:

While charter schools are publicly funded, they often don't have the same access to bonds and other financing available to mainstream public schools. That forces many to operate in places like storefronts or church basements, said Todd Ziebarth, vice president of policy for the alliance.

They're not public schools. They were created as a way to push through privatization.

Friedmanism is alive and well despite the fact it is a fraud and doesn't work in any sector designed for the "common good."


And of course public schools are already infected with this privatization cancer. Superintendents, for example, who used to be educators with a lot of teaching experience, are now being taught MBA-style "management" techniques, i.e., ways to get around tenure and union contracts, not to mention know how to milk the system for their benefit, by attending the Eli Broad Academy and becoming "fellows," like the new WCSD superintendent Heath Morrison.

From the same website is this article from Forbes about six years ago about the academy, which numerous public school superintendents have attended:

Most district superintendents are trained teachers but must run multimillion-dollar budgets, haggle with unions and spend face time with parents, teachers and politicians. Little wonder they now last an average of only four years on the job. In big cities, principals jump from crisis to crisis, devoting little time to academics, National Center on Education & the Economy research has found. "He has the right idea," says U.S. Education Secretary Roderick Paige of Broad, a close ally. "Governance of many schools is such that you turn the steering wheel but the vehicle doesn't turn."

Sensible as Broad's strategy sounds, getting big education to buy in is the real test, as many would-be reformers have discovered. A century ago upper-crust do-gooders replaced corrupt ward bosses with professional school managers. In time the system mutated into a lethargic bureaucracy. Two decades ago a report titled "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" created a new sense of crisis, yet little has changed since. "Rich white guys have been doing this [trying to reform education] for a long time," says Jeffrey Mirel, a University of Michigan professor of education and history.

Yep, it's real progress, replacing the corrupt standards of public education with the corrupt practices of corporate America, or the Enronization of public education. In fact, today it is MUCH worse to work in public education than it was twenty or thirty years ago before the privatization mantra took hold. Meanwhile, the kids are screwed over royal.