GUEST POST – Charter Schools: The New Private Prisons?
A new report from the Justice Department recommends the suspension of contracts for private prisons, effective immediately. In explaining the justification for this decision, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates concluded that “the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.”
Teachers and those who have observed the impact of the corporate education reform agenda on public education over the last decade or so may notice some striking similarities between the findings of this Justice Department report and the explosion of the charter school industry in our country. As with the private prison scenario, the explosion of charter schools in the last decade has created parallel school systems–both allegedly public, but fighting for limited resources, and competing on an uneven playing field.
As my friend, Steven Singer, says: “In Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to have ‘separate but equal’ schools, because when they’re separate, they’re rarely equal. Having two parallel systems of education makes it too easy to provide more resources to some kids and less to others.”
Initially proposed in the 1970s as a “laboratory in innovation” for pedagogical practices, and even embraced by AFT President Albert Shanker in 1988, charter schools were intended to function as incubators for innovative teaching techniques, strategies and policies.
Today, the experiment has been co-opted in many states by “for-profit” charter school management companies, such as K12.com, which was supported by the investments of convicted felon Michael Milken. These for-profit networks are characterized by schools staffed with CONTINUE READING: GUEST POST – Charter Schools: The New Private Prisons? | Eclectablog
