Using "reform" to push charters: democracy supplanted by private sector power blocs

[Hannah Bell]

Houston business leaders, now that George W. Bush is out of office, are preparing to hoist a second wave of "school reform" on the nation. The first wave was making former Houston Superintendent Rod Paige the Secretary of Education and passing No Child Left Behind...

The business elite has rallied around two charter networks: Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and YES Prep, which are led by two former roommates. They plan to recruit 20,000 students out of the public schools.

By contrast with other cities where charter schools are popping up, in Houston, KIPP and YES Prep are seeking to establish an oligopoly, rather than an open marketplace with competing small providers. KIPP and YES Prep will form, in effect, rival public school systems run by private boards. The long-term goal is for KIPP/YES Prep to form a powerful political bloc...When the Houston experiment is concluded, and once Republicans are returned to power, Houston businessmen will want to take this show on the road the way they did after manufacturing a phony "Houston Miracle" under Rod Paige...

Houston's far-right business leaders are like an infection on the national polity that will not go away. As if two wars and exploding deficits were not enough of a contribution, the right is preparing for a comeback with an educational model that makes our nation's public-school teachers vulnerable, shuts down neighborhood schools and supplants democratically elected school leaders with private-sector power blocs.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/09/08/using-reform-push-charters

[sabrina 1]

1. They want to destroy the Public School System. And sadly Arne Duncan

is helping them. NCLB was a businessman's dream. All those public funds available, all those tests that schools had to buy from Bush's friends in the Educational Publishing business. And they must be very, very grateful to Arne Duncan, because if a real Democrat had been in charge of Education, and actually done what was promised in the campaign, some badly needed reform to undo the harm of NCLB, their big scheme to get their hands on all that public money might have run into some problems.

Instead things are chugging along just as these rightwing thugs intended when they came up with the monstrous, cynical plan to destroy the Public Schools and turn out generations of uneducated but trained not-to-think-too-much future slaves to corporations.

I am so disgusted with what Obama has done in this area. It is heart-breaking really ....

[sabrina 1]

2. I rec'd this post for the record.

For some reason there are people who do not want the American people to have important information like this.

I wonder if people remember how Bush and his cabal came up with NCLB. Who was involved in crafting it and how many people in his circle of friends became even more wealthy as a result of it being approved by Congress.

[Hannah Bell]

4. There's a big contingent of ed deform supporters here; they're immune to any criticism,

even as the anti-democratic direction of deform & its failure to improve education becomes blatant.

And my guess is the reason for that is that deform benefits the upper-middle class in a variety of ways.

[sabrina 1]

5. I wonder if they realize they are supporting Bush policies?

[Hannah Bell]

6. They don't care. They're lifestyle libs, not fdr libs. Lifestyle libs are just one step removed

from libertarians.

[sabrina 1]

7. That's too bad. I feel sorry for them in a way.

I can't imagine being so blind as not to be able to see what destroying the educational opportunities of future generations will do this country. I am hoping that his is just a phase, and that it will pass when the results become more obvious.

[Hannah Bell]

8. The first time I went to Mexico I was shocked when I saw the homes of the rich with barbed wire

on top of the walls surrounding them, & guards with guns at the doors of upscale/tourist shops. I wondered "How can people live like this?"

But they can, & do. Their main concern is to keep & increase their wealth, & they fear & hate those they exploit & steal from. They support their repression & murder, because they see them as enemies who want to take their wealth & power. And they view them as inferior beings.

The bottom 80% better get wise or they're going to be run over.

[sabrina 1]

9. Many of our own wealthy crooks are living like that here.

That's why we have mercenaries now, to protect the wealthy from the rabble. And although I didn't understand why we had a mercenary army in this country, and assumed there would be shock and outrage over it back when we first learned about it, now I see that this was planned a long time ago.

And Alan Simpson was merely expressing out loud what many of them think of the American people when he said they were 'trying to help the lesser people'.

I hope people do wake up, but it may take one more election cycle before the people have had enough.

[Hardrada]

11. That's true. That's kind of the sell-out staratum of our society.

They have just enough to feel superior to the tears and bleeding of nearly all the rest of their countrymen.

[Hardrada]

3. This must become general knowledge.

[sabrina 1]

10. I agree ~

[leftstreet]

12. K&R

This has to be one of the most under-reported, privatizing, union busting, capitalist bloodsucking bullshit things in modern times.

Fuck 'em