There was a great article in January of last year at the Perimeter Primate blog. The Primate is a knowledgeable parent who blogs about the farce of education "reform."
When some of us started talking about the new reforms and what they meant, no one took it seriously. After all the media loves the new moves on public education...so we never hear a negative word from them.
But things are moving more quickly now. Experienced teachers are being fired or laid off to be replaced by temp teachers trained in only a few weeks...yet held up as being elite. Not just in education. I think about how library funding is being cut, public parks closed. In Florida Rick Scott has even tried to turn parks over to private companies...and he will succeed most likely.
NCLB is being seen now as a disaster, only to be replaced by RTTT which is an even bigger problem. After all, how do you proclaim success when 82% of the country's schools are set to be failures by the end of this year. Those words are from Arne Duncan himself.
From a post by Steven Miller, a long time Oakland teacher at Perimeter Primate.
Democracy Privatized!Oakland teachers have had to face the hard lessons of Privatization earlier than most. The state took over the public schools in 2003 and then turned the school system into a virtual laboratory for the corporate concept of schools: opening charters left and right, closing schools, laying off librarians and custodians, trashing the quality of public education, and testing, testing, testing.
Our experience is that privatization proceeds in pieces, the first step includes turning over public functions to “the market” through corporatizing every policy and procedure. The United States – the first country to establish free, universal public education – is on now track to being the first country to eliminate it. After seven years, far more cities than Oakland are living out what this means.
The final step is the disenfranchisement of the public in all forms and the extermination of public rights, public lands, public parks, public control, public concerns, public spaces, the public commons, the welfare of the public, public issues and… public power.
This is the formal Dispossession of the Public and the elimination of its role in human affairs. Privatization and dispossession are two sides of the same coin. Naomi Klein describes how this began with the federal government, under George Bush II, in her great book The Shock Doctrine. New Orleans showed us what this means in practice.
I did a search and found another article Steve Miller wrote for Perimeter Primate. It is called Pimping for Privatization, 2009.
Pimping for PrivatizationNow that these forces are out of the closet at last, we can examine their central premise, first articulated by that champion of civil rights and equality, right-wing economist, Milton Friedman.
Friedman demanded the total privatization of schools. He claimed that the so-called “free market” is the best guarantee of efficiency, quality education and equality (not to mention modernizing the system) because it introduces competition, which provides “choice” for parents.
This is in essence the corporate model for education. It is being sold across the country to parents, especially minority parents, who are quite clear that the public schools are more segregated than ever, and who are desperate for something different. Nationally, a gaggle of reactionary billionaires (the Walton family, of Wal-Mart, Eli Broad, of KB homes and AIG Retirement, and Donald Fisher of the Gap) have suddenly become champions of equality and are pushing charter schools as the solution.
How true this statement is quickly becoming:
The government is getting out of the business of governing. So it should be no surprise that privatization is being forced on school systems across the country.
And one further comment from Miller:
The End of Equality?
The idea that the so-called “free market” can solve social problems is a scam and a fraud. For 40 years, the US has pushed the economics and politics of Neo-Liberalism on countries from South America to Asia and Africa every time there has been an economic crisis. Now that we are beginning to live through what clearly is the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, these policies are being forced on the American people.
The first link above from the Perimeter Primate links to this Investors' Forum article.
Investor’s Club: How the UC Regents Spin Public Funds into Private ProfitNot just K-12 education anymore. Got to take over those universities also. Lately I see ad after ad for private colleges, and it is so deceptive I have to check online who is connected to the universities. Parents probably don't know the difference, and there appears to be no one to tell them.
Investor’s Club: How the UC Regents Spin Public Funds into Private Profit
Story update: A story from Peter Byrne while researching this piece looked into the financial ties of UC regent Richard Blum and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. UC regents, Schwarzenegger and Wachter - Are they making a profit from University investments? Republished by the SF Public Press and Sacramento News & Review. The piece caught the attention of Senator Leland Yee who subsequently called for an audit of the UC system.With thousands of students protesting huge tuition hikes, the public needs to know who benefits from controlling the University of California’s $53 billion in Wall Street investments. That is billion, with a B!
Several very wealthy, politically powerful men are fixtures on the regent's investment committee, including Richard C. Blum (Wall Streeter, war contractor, and husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein), and Paul Wachter (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s long-time business partner and financial advisor). The probability of conflicts of interest inside this committee—as it moves billions of dollars between public and private companies and investment banks—is enormous. While some of this mammoth cash exchange takes place in the sunlight of the public eye, much of it is done behind closed doors, and the regents decline to disclose the names and activities of many of their private equity investment partners. "Dark pool" investments of this type are not available to ordinary investors--you have to know someone who manages them--like Messrs. Blum or Wachter.
It is no accident that most of the appointed regents are multi-millionaires with little or no experience in education, but with tons of experience in making lucrative deals, often by leveraging public funds.
It's like a sleight of hand even at the elementary, middle school, and high school level. Public money which should support public schools is going to charter schools run by management companies who will make a profit. They may call themselves non-profit and sport that IRS designation, but they are getting taxpayer money and corporate money in most cases.
Diane Ravitch once answered a blogger with such a clear response.
Hi, Fred,
I think that Bush wishes he could have imposed the agenda laid out in Race to the Top, but he would have had to fight against the Democrats in Congress. They would never have supported a plan that bribed states to lift the caps on charter schools–far too intrusive, and many would have seen this as privatization. Nor would they have supported a federal requirement that states remove any legal restriction on linking teacher evaluations to student test scores–not only because it is offensive to teachers, who know that they are not solely responsible for their students’ scores, but because the research does not support this idea.
So, do I think that Duncan is carrying forward Bush’s agenda? Yes, beyond the dreams of Margaret Spellings, and without the opposition of the Democrats in Congress.But please, tell me, do you think I am wrong? Do you like the fact that a Democratic administration is promoting charters, private management, merit pay, and high-stakes testing for teachers?
Diane Ravitch
Diane Ravitch answers a blogger
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