INVESTORS RESIST IDEA OF SOCIETY AS STAKEHOLDER IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
Parents are key stakeholders in any child’s education. Does that mean that they are the only stakeholders? One upon a time in America most people would say “no”. They would say that it’s all of society. But not anymore. Investors are what has changed that equation.
Reformster propaganda is having its effect
Most of the people who I know would agree that the whole of society benefits from mandatory public education. However, reformsters and too many state school chiefs have been pushing for a different understanding. They speak, issue administrative directives, and lobby the legislatures as though parents are the ultimate stakeholder in a child’s education.
It’s given as the justification for massive, high-stakes testing, value-added measurement (VAM) of teachers, and A-F “report cards”.
Isn’t that concept of parents being the only stakeholder convenient for investors who want a nation-wide industry of literally selling education? Once the general public, big media, politicians, and school boards start accepting that notion, then it will be easier to sell education to those who can pay. The investors will come out way ahead.
But big-money reformsters have to convince more of us that education is a product to be sold to parents for this to happen. That’s why there has been millions spent for right-wing think tanks to promote the idea of the parent as the sole stakeholder in public education.
“Parent trigger” laws open the way for private interests
So how do they do that? “Parent trigger” laws have been passed in several states now by using the argument that parents are just stuck with awful public education and need a way out.
Notice the whole framework of this: Parents, if your school is not meeting up to your expectations, just vote for our parent trigger law as a way to pull your kid out of that school and shop for a better school product.
A part of class warfare against democracy
These big investors are a part of the very rich class, and do not want those parents to do things that might threaten minority rule of the rich like organizing, engaging in collective protest, exercising their democratic power to elect new school boards and demanding change in their publicly-owned schools.
For the very rich investors, they want to sell education to parents as shoppers at taxpayer expense while cutting out those very taxpayers from the decisions and input into just what kind of education the current generation of children are getting.
The bait-and-switch of pretending to rescue the children of the poor by these methods is a ruse to make us believe that there is something noble about the very rich trying to create new investment opportunities at taxpayer expense.
Some are realizing this for what it is as reports from those parent trigger states start coming to light such as in California where some charters have taken taxpayer money, shortchanged the students and teachers, and sent tax money up the line to administrators and investors. It is a money grab at the public’s expense.
We have allowed radical experimentation on the poor
In a series of three posts that I have written about New Orleans, Detroit, and Newark, I have shown that in fact, investor-owned Investors Resist Idea of Society as Stakeholder in Public Education:
