This Teacher Post May Be Close to the Truth

about what is motivating the privatizers:

On 6/06/12, Storm wrote:
> Maybe no one should teach anymore. The lack of teachers will
> remind the government exactly how necessary it is to have
> qualified teachers working for them.

You are right on there. This is what I think as well. Mainly I think it because most people who go into teaching do it with good intentions and don't deserve what is going to happen to them.

Many of the powerful people in government know very well that they are destroying education. They don't care. Their children don't go to public school. Their children go to very expensive, elite private schools. Heck, even Obama's kids don't go to public school anymore. So public education doesn't represent something that directly affects them. Public education is a tax that they have to pay. If teachers become cheap and disposable, then a lot of the main expense of public education is greatly diminished. And the rich and powerful can run charter school organizations and get management fees and real estate fees, which can make them rich. The main drain was the expense of the teachers. But they are making a lot of that expense go away. Aren't they clever.

If you look at a country like South Africa where education for the public is completely destroyed, it still doesn't effect the upper crust of people, whose children go to decent schools inside of guarded and gated communities. The rich in America see where we are headed. Do not think for a second that they didn't sit and discuss the repercussions of the new demographics years ago and start making plans for what to do about it. Soon, minorities are going to outnumber whites. You see? The rich and powerful are being proactive. They are making sure that those minorities are not going to be a huge tax burden on them. So they have to dismantle the public education system we have, which is expensive and not for profit. Just like in South Africa, the rich kids will still have good schools. It is the masses who will go to schools with unqualified teachers and few resources.

But they have to pretend that they are trying to get qualified teachers so that nobody suspects what they are up to. People who earn teaching credentials are collateral damage.


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Another excellent post, this one about Louisiana's abolition of public schools. Of course "Democrat" Arne Duncan thought Katrina was the best thing that ever happened there until he was forced to make an (insincere) apology:

Charters make money by cutting costs-like a hamburger chain.

1. They take uncertified, mostly very new college graduates that they pay a pittance to, and work half to death. When they burn them out (1 or 2 years is typical) they just hire more newbies. (so much for being Highly Qualified, huh?" Of course they either don't pay any benefits or pension, or count on their staff not sticking around for long enough to need a pay increase or qualify for benefits. The current job market is perfect for this kind of hiring;might be more difficult when the economy mproves and these "teachers" have other choices.

2. They spend very little if anything, compared to public schools, on Special Ed kids or ESL. These kids are expensive and difficult to teach, and they disrupt the bottom line, so they are "counseled out" at the outset or kicked back to public school if they are accepted (AFTER the charter has received their tuition money from the state, of course.)

3. Extra-curricular activities, field trips and so on are not needed, since the entire focus is on test-prep. Many of the "learning programs" are prepackaged/scripted, both eliminating the need for expensive books and materials, and eliminating the need for experienced staff.

4. Charter schools can fund-raise, and I don't mean bake-sales so the band can go to a competition. They can lobby for funds from private foundations, who of course have pretty strict requirements on just how their money is to be used (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others). Public schools cannot do the same.

So is it all fine because, after all, parents will just take their kids out if they don't like the charter? Where will they go? To the local public school, which loses funding with every child who leaves, and has to take every troubled kid that the charters throw out? To the public school with the crumbling ceiling and the flooded bathrooms, which are not repaired because the state/county/school district cannot afford it?

In many parishes in Louisiana, there ARE no alternatives to the neighborhood charter school because all the public schools were eliminated with Katrina. Of course the family can always move, I suppose. At least they still have that "choice."