Privateers and Profiteers in Our Schools
By Anthony Cody.
I was recently invited to speak at a conference in another state. Since I could not make it there in person, I recorded my thoughts on this video.
Here is the text of my remarks:
Privateers and Profiteers: How and Why are they Undermining Public Education?
As we near the end of the Obama administration, it is a good time to take a closr look at what has happened to public education over the past seven years.
Some very powerful people have used money and the political influence that money buys to undermine and set the stage for the elimination of public education as we have known it for the past 100 years.
To be sure public education has always been flawed, but there was an aspiration in what the Washington state supreme court recently called “common schools,” that we should have schools funded and governed by citizens, that serve all members of our communities. That social compact is in the process of being ripped up by people who believe that in the absence of a profit motive, public institutions are incapable of innovation.
How is this being done?
There are two major thrusts under way. The first project is to transfer tax dollars out of public schools and into private schools, parochial schools and semi-private charters. Organizations like the Gates, Walton and Broad Foundations have promoted charter schools as the way to “break the public school monopoly.” Charter schools will insist they are public, but any time there is a legal conflict, they will state over and over again that they are private entities. In California, charter operators go to their authorizing public agency only once every several years for a perfunctory renewal. Only in cases of gross malfeasance is a charter ever revoked. Other than this, public oversight is nil, which is one reason a recent report found that nearly $4 billion in federal funds have disappeared into a “black hole” of fraudulent charter schools – some of which took millions of dollars and never even opened their doors. And these schools divert scarce public funding, Privateers and Profiteers in Our Schools - Living in Dialogue: