The 4 Most Profound Ways Privatization Perverts Education | Alternet

The 4 Most Profound Ways Privatization Perverts Education | Alternet:

The 4 Most Profound Ways Privatization Perverts Education

Compared to other developed countries, equal education has been a low priority in America.

Profit-seeking in the banking and health care industries has victimized Americans. Now it's beginning to happen in education, with our children as the products.

There are good reasons - powerful reasons - to stop the privatization efforts before the winner-take-all free market creates a new vehicle for inequality. At the very least we need the good sense to slow it down while we examine the evidence about charters and vouchers.

1. Charter Schools Have Not Improved Education

The recently updated  CREDO study at Stanford revealed that while charters have made progress since 2009, their performance is  about the same as that of public schools. The differences are, in the words of the  National Education Policy Center, "so small as to be regarded, without hyperbole, as trivial." Furthermore, the four-year improvement demonstrated by charters may have been due to the  closing of schools that underperformed in the earlier study, and also by a variety of means to discourage the attendance of lower-performing students.

Ample evidence exists beyond CREDO to question the effectiveness of charter schools (although they continue to have both  supporters and detractors). In  Ohio, charters were deemed inferior to traditional schools in all grade/subject combinations. Texas charters had a much  lower graduation rate in 2012 than traditional schools. In Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal