Gordon Lafer, a political economist and University of Oregon professor who has advised Congress, state legislatures, and the New York City mayor's office, landed at the airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, late last night bringing with him a briefing paper on school privatization and how it hurts poor kids.
Lafer's report, "Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin," released today by the Economic Policy Institute, documents the effects of both for-profit and non-profit charter schools that are taking over struggling public schools in Milwaukee.
"I hope people connect the dots," Lafer said by phone from the Milwaukee airport.
Lafer's research, commissioned by the Economic Policy Institute to evaluate the school-privatization push in Milwaukee, is a sweeping indictment of the growing private charter school industry -- and other schemes backed by rightwing groups and big business -- that siphon public funds out of public schools and enrich corporate investors at the expense of quality education for poor children.
Milwaukee is ground zero for school privatization, having pioneered the use of publicly funded private school vouchers in 1990.
In its last session, Wisconsin legislators pushed forward bills to close low-performing public schools and replace them with less accountable, privately run enterprises. The Economic Policy Institute asked Lafer to analyze the effects of privatization on the children these schools serve.
The results are not pretty.
A popular chain of charter schools called Rocketship, which originated in California and has spread to Wisconsin, with the enthusiastic support of state legislators and the local chamber of commerce in Milwaukee, is "a low-Scathing Report Finds Rocketship, School Privatization Hurt Poor Kids | The Progressive: