A Charter Founder Defends His For-Profit Charters in the Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal editorial pages has been promoting school choice—charters and vouchers—for many years. It sees public education as a government monopoly, not a public service. It has published article after article explaining away the failures of school choice and re-interpreting negative evidence.
A few days ago, the paper may have struck a new low when it published a defense of charter schools by Baker Mitchell, the founder of a for-profit chain of charters in North Carolina, a non-educator who rakes in millions of dollars every year by owning four charters.
When he saw the WSJ article by Mitchell, North Carolina Teacher Stuart Egan pointed out that Baker Mitchell was reiterating the talking points created by Rhonda Dillingham, executive director of the North Carolina Association for Public [sic] Charter Schools.
Who is Baker Mitchell? He is a retired electrical engineer and a libertarian in the Koch brothers’ mold. He moved to North Carolina in 1997 and soon became allied with Art Pope, a rightwing libertarian who funded the Tea Party takeover of the state in 2010.
ProPublica featured Baker Mitchell as an example of a businessman who was turning public education dollars into his own private profits.
Here is an excerpt:
The school’s founder, a politically active North Carolina businessman named Baker Mitchell, shares the Kochs’ free-market ideals. His model for success embraces CONTINUE READING: A Charter Founder Defends His For-Profit Charters in the Wall Street Journal | Diane Ravitch's blog
