Blixt/My Turn: Say ‘no’ to K12
Greenfield is selling out its educational legacy to the lowest bidder — a corporation that has established a solidly toxic reputation for profiteering, lying, manipulation, creepy ultra-right-wing politics and looting the public trust.
K12 Inc. is called “The Monsanto of Education.”
Does this seem too harsh? Only in that it may be unfair to Monsanto. K12 has spent three years openly and arrogantly preying on the most damaged, disabled and despairing Massachusetts students and their families, while it has racked up a litany of well-documented charges of lying to parents, teachers, school committees, regulators and investors.
Dig this: Illinois and Maine just passed laws preventing schools from contracting with K12 for the creation of “virtual schools;” Florida charges that K12 hired uncertified teachers. K12 has rarely operated a program that has not been poisoned, fatally or otherwise, by its distortions.
Almost nobody, frankly, wants to deal with K12 Inc. anymore. Almost nobody, it seems, but Greenfield.
Nobody but Greenfield, where school officials have cozied up to K12 since the town’s first flirtation with virtual anything; Nobody but Greenfield, which — on June 25 — is likely to get approval for its Commonwealth Virtual Charter School, to be