Privately run city schools cost more to improve (Suprise)

[WhiteTara]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-te.md.edison09sep09,0,5338560.story?coll=bal-local-howard&track=mostemailedlink

I know this is going to suprise you completely. After all, the propaganda has told us for the past 5 years that the private sector can do it better. Uh, guess NOT!

snip
And its administrative costs per pupil are nearly twice those of the city school system.

The state deducts the amount of money it gives to Edison from the money it allocates to the city school system. Last school year, Edison received $20.1 million.
ship
"Particularly troubling," he wrote, "is when a for-profit firm such as Edison Schools, Inc., which operates three public schools in Baltimore, is compensated in part based on its test scores - information that is solely under Edison's control with no external monitoring."

Embry, a former chairman of the state and city school boards, said in an interview yesterday that there are three "givens" with Edison running the three city schools:

One, "the schools have done better." Two, "comparably bad schools have done even better." Three, "Edison's only in it to make money. ... It has to cover its overhead and it has to make a profit."

[sam sarrha]

1. Neil Bu$h invested the states pension fund in Edison... only made a profit

one quater in 7 years i bellieve.

apparently they were going to go belly up, and neil bailed them out with the pension fund.. for a while..

[WhiteTara]

2. Oh great! What happens to the kids?

Do they just sit home now? Another reason why public school is the only way to go. Our children are way too important to leave to profiteers.

[sam sarrha]

4. your mean what happens to the people that lose their PENSIONS.!!!!!

[WhiteTara]

17. well, those too. But the kids are real in those schools and

if they go bankrupt, they will cease to exist and then what happens to the kids? More overcrowding? Worse conditions?

Maybe we should just not educate the little rug rats and they will be better workers (if you only need to be able to read the pictures to do the job that is) and we won't have these uppity educated people wanting more. And, if all those old folks lose their money at the same time; well, I'm sure that they would have died sooner or later anyway, they were old and it was time for them to die (even if it was from starvation or some preventable disease. Oh, sorry time to turn the :rant: button on.

I only hope that Fitzgerald comes up with some impeachable offenses and the whole lot of them go down to jail together, taking that creep Hasturd and the Bugman with them.

[salin]

5. It was Jeb!

and they "reprivatized" edison about 10 months after Edison nearly was delisted by Nasdaq because its shares were trading for under a dollar for almost a month. And yes, prior to being bought by the Florida employess pension fund, it had only turned one quarter of profit - while it had eaten millions upon millions of venture capital.

Note that this is the same public pension fund that bought up Enron stock WHILE its value was plummetting and lost millions for the state fund.

[Toots]

6. What state did Neil Bush invest state funds from?

Did you mean Jeb Bush*?

[sam sarrha]

16. yes

[LeftyMom]

3. Those for-profit charters are a scam

I'm all for education without state restrictions, but it should be done with private funds and by people motivated by children's well-being, rather than profit.

Charters are based on the idea that one can take state money without following all state laws, an attempt to get something for nothing. If the laws are too restrictive (and many are) all schools should be free from the burden.

[tanyev]

7. And a lot of the charters are run by Republican cronies.

Yet another way to get public money into their own greedy pockets.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. WalMart's Walton family has one of these companies

School Futures - out of California.

[WhiteTara]

19. I wonder how many phony degrees set those

schools up? I can imagine they are all like ole "you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie"; i.e., inept,greedy and stupid. Oh, I left out liars on their resumes.

[bleedingheart]

8. Education's profits are not tangible for years...basically it will always

be a case where putting money into it is a good faith investment. Parents and the teachers are responsible for educating children so that when they get out...they get good jobs and end up paying more into the collective tax structure...just a great big circle of life..

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. The bad part is when these private companies give up

and abandon the charter schools they have sponsored. I was working in one of these schools and the private company took EVERYTHING when they dropped the school from its sponsorship list. I actually witnessed reps from this company coming into the classrooms and taking pencils out of children's hands. Pencils that most likely cost the company less than a penny apiece were taken away from kids while they were using them to do their work.

It is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen.

[donco6]

11. Can you share what company it was?

I want to make sure we steer clear of those a-holes.

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. School Futures

They were out of California.

[donco6]

14. Thankfully, never heard of them.

We have people come pitch us every once in a while. So far, we've avoided having a charter school or privatization. We get along pretty well with the union these days, and I think they know the score when it comes to this sort of thing.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. I wish our state lawmakers had listened to our union

Charters are currently allowed ONLY in the two largest cities in the state. Both have had deseg lawsuits that cost the state a bundle. So I really believe the state is allowing charters in an attempt to destroy the urban public schools.

My district has lost 25% of its kids to charters.

[donco6]

21. We have a ton of charters here in CO.

The majority of them are white flight schools in the suburbs. A large developer even began an application for a state charter (basically a charter district). It's sad.

[WhiteTara]

18. so what happened to the kids? Did they go back

to public schools?

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. That school found a new sponsor

But most charters close when they lose their sponsor.

[leesa]

12. Who could have known?