Real Faces Behind Corporate Reform? Look Closer. | deutsch29

Real Faces Behind Corporate Reform? Look Closer. | deutsch29

Real Faces Behind Corporate Reform? Look Closer.

A few days ago, I read this February 28, 2019, Forbes article entitled, “The Real Faces Behind the ‘Corporate Reform’ of America’s Public Schools,” by Emily Langhorne, policy analyst for the Reinventing America’s Schools project at The Progressive Policy Institute.

In her piece, Langhorne features three DC charter school CEOs; she does so to counter words spoken by National Education Association (NEA) president, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, regarding the Los Angeles teachers’ strike– words that Langhorne misquotes, and in which she employs one strategically-placed ellipsis, as follows:

Unfortunately, those listening to coverage of the Los Angeles teachers strike received a very different definition of charter schools from National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García. On MSNBC, she explained that the Los Angeles Unified School District had no money because “they’ve given it away to for-profit charters. If you’re in the charter industry, what do you want to do? You want to create horrible public schools…. The billionaires who are behind this, the venture capitalists, the Wall Street guys, are out to make money on public schools.”

This statement is absurd: California has never had many for-profit charters, and the legislature banned them entirely last year. Nationwide, less than 15% of the roughly 7,000 charters are run by for-profit operators.

First of all, Eskelsen Garcia does not say “for-profit charters.” She says “for-profit companies.”

I can operate a nonprofit charter school and make money by the way I distribute contracts for school services to for-profit companies, even ones to which I am connected. (Arizona is a fine example of a state in which one can handily use a nonprofit charter school to serve oneself. Charter advocates sell this as “free from bureaucratic red tape,” like Langhorne does in her article.)

That error right there kills Langhorne’s piece: One can siphon public education funding into for-profit company coffers via nonprofit entities, including charter CONTINUE READING: Real Faces Behind Corporate Reform? Look Closer. | deutsch29