Investigation Spotlights Corporate Money Behind Virtual Schools
By Edward Graham
Studies have shown that virtual schools don’t deliver as good an education as traditional public schools. But that hasn’t stopped privateers from championing for-profit online education, raising serious concerns about how corporate money continues to shape many of the education policies being implemented across the country.A recent investigation by the Portland Press Herald revealed that a bulk of the proposed education bills in Maine have been crafted by out-of-state private companies that would profit greatly from so-called “reforms” - namely the establishment of virtual charter schools throughout the state by the two largest online education corporations, K12 Inc. and Connections Education.
“This is the ideal form of crony capitalism,” Gene Glass, senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center, told the Herald. “These are free market entrepreneurial companies manipulating the law to create markets for themselves.”
Crafting bills to permit the use of taxpayer dollars to establish virtual charter schools in the state, Maine’s education commissioner, Stephen Bowen, relied heavily on support and strategic guidance from the