Privatization of Public Schools Doesn't Work,

but that hasn't stopped proponents from continuing their reckless "reforms." It's all about those trillion of taxpayer dollars, after all.

Not surprisingly, the bad education delivered by privatised education also comes with a heavy dose of corruption: at least six Philadelphia charter schools are under criminal investigation by the office of the state's attorney general, after the Philadelphia Inquirer - and the city's comptroller - reported rampant financial mismanagement and nepotism in the city's charter system. As in other cities, public money was extensively abused in real estate profiteering schemes, as charter school operators used schools as tenants, paying money to themselves to rent their own property. In one particularly classy instance, the charter operator was running a private parking lot on school property. Exorbitant salaries were common for the charter school operators, and some implausibly held fully salaried jobs in multiple schools, billing the city for more than 365 days in a year. At least two Philadelphia charter school operators have pleaded guilty to one such series of frauds - with sentencing scheduled for July - and the Inquirer's investigations may lead to further prosecutions.

Austerity has been a crucial partner for privatisers in the United States, where New Orleans has endured an overhaul similar to Philadelphia's, and school systems in New York and Chicago are suffering a more gradual erosion. Schools are starved of resources. Then the rich and their for-profit companies are brought in as white knights to "save" - or loot, whichever they prefer - the failing systems. In Philadelphia, according to the alternative City Paper, "it has been a long time since the schools had close to adequate funding". Indeed, for years, the state of Pennsylvania fought a lawsuit, filed in 1999, by the city of Philadelphia, its school district and the National Association of Colored People (NAACP), charging the state with racial discrimination: the city's schools, attended largely by poor children of colour, had been systematically under-funded, compared with suburban and rural districts, which are predominantly white.

Scary stuff.