Racing to the Bottom through School Choice and Privatization | janresseger

Racing to the Bottom through School Choice and Privatization | janresseger:

Racing to the Bottom through School Choice and Privatization

Posted on October 31, 2013 by janresseger

Here is a third and final reflection stimulated by my trip last weekend to Fort Wayne, Indiana.  (The first two pieces are here and here.)  At an afternoon forum last Sunday on public education—during panel discussions and in informal conversations—I heard people trying to parse out the impact on their lives of Indiana’s rapidly accelerating privatization of public schools.

Indiana has a three-year-old, rapidly growing voucher program that has, according to the Associated Press, doubled in size since last year. And Indiana hosts a thriving charter school sector.  While the sponsors of charter schools persistently refer to them as public charter schools, these schools are public only in the sense that they receive public funding. They are almost always privately managed and often privately owned.

In this post, I will compare comments I heard by individuals last Sunday afternoon with reflections by experts writing from a broader, philosophical point of view.  The experts’