Louisiana is a school reform industry success story. Industry insider Michelle Rhee gave the state a high grade for Excellence in School Reform Industry Practice. So, in the interest of accountability (a very, very important concept among reform industry leaders, but one they never apply to themselves) I thought I’d tell you about one of the totally awesome game-changers they’re attempting in Louisiana. This is a plan to sell publicly funded for-profit education products door-to-door. It’s called Course Choice, and if that sounds more like a product than a “public school program” to you then you’re making Adequate Yearly Progress in school reform industry studies. It’s also a lot like the plan that Michigan Governor Snyder planned to put in until a newspaper found out he was holding secret meetings to develop the sales team. Course Choice in Louisiana = Value Vouchers in Michigan. It’s super-de-duper innovative, because the reform industry can spoon on a thick, creamy layer of profit on top of many of these courses:
In the separate mini-voucher program due to launch in 2013, students across Louisiana, regardless of income, will be able to tap the state treasury to pay for classes that are offered by private vendors and not available in their regular public schools. Students can also use the mini-vouchers to design their own curriculum, tapping state funds to pay for online classes or private tutors if they’re not satisfied with their public school’s offerings.
Officials have not estimated the price tag of these programs but expect the state will save money in the long run, because they believe the private sector can educate kids more cheaply than public schools.
You gotta believe, especially when you claim you’re “data-driven.”
State officials will review every private-sector class before approving it. They are still working out how to assess rigor and effectiveness.
They have absolutely no idea whether this “aggressive strategy” is either rigorous or effective. None. In fact, they have a ton of evidence from other states (like Ohio) that it will be ineffective. Here’s a Lousiana blogger who was alerted to ads on Craig’s List for temps to sell this newest reform industry product door-to-door:
The campaign is already starting up. There will be millions devoted to marketing alone. One of my readers found some ads that are now being run all over Lousiana to hire salesmen to hawk these courses to parents in high poverty neighborhoods:
“Help change the landscape of public education in Louisiana!
On your own time! With the potential to make $75k+ in 6 months or less!
Company Description: SmartStart Virtual Academy (“SVA”) (a division of SmartStart Education) is a state-approved Course Choice provider. This means that SVA has been authorized to offer FREE courses to high-school students in the state of Louisiana for graduation credit. SVA is offering 22 approved courses — both core-classes (such as reading, math and science) and career-ready courses (such as web-design and publishing).”
“Pay rate: $16/hour Position Responsibilities: Conduct door-to-door marketing of program.”
There’s a new reform industry report card out. This one is by ALEC. ALEC is the lobbying group that purchases state legislators and writes many of our nation’s least-popular state laws. They were also very active in gutting weapon regulations and passing voter suppression legislation, because nothing says Excellence in Education like pushing for laws that make it harder for poor people to vote. On the other hand, I’ve had to learn a certain amount about state election law thanks to the caring teachers at ALEC, so in that sense ALEC is furthering my education. Like Rhee, ALEC also puts Louisiana and Florida near the top of the reform industry class. Not in actual education achievement, but in ideological fealty to, and I’m quoting the ALEC motto here:
Limited Government · Free Markets · Federalism
The design of the Report Card isn’t merely to show which state has had the best performing students. We wanted to give legislators the tools they need to fix their state’s education system.” said Ladner, one of the book’s authors. “This report highlights the most promising and effective reforms that will give all students access to an outstanding education.”
Thankfully, the state supreme court gave the latest Rhee-Jindal-ALEC privatization laws an “F” rather than a “B” and Jindal seems to be none too popular with the people who actually live in the state.
Redshift
Fixed that for them.
aimai
Holy Shit. That is all I can say.
I really wish I were in a position to start a parent’s rights group that would work at the state level for a “schoolchildren’s bill of rights.”
1) A safe, healthy, up to date public school in every neighborhood.
2) Each school must meet minimum standards in terms of size, space (per child), library, on staff school nurse, in house dental and eye exams, sports facilities, theater, and art facilities.
3) No charter school can be granted a charter without meeting the same base line facilities offerings as the public school.
4) The standard offered should be based on what is offered in the highesst income communities, not what is offered in the lowest.
JCT
Great post title.
If I lived in one of these states that were infested with grifters/goniffs like Rhee and still had kids in school I would be driven insane by this.
Elizabelle
So glad you are following this topic, Kay.
Wicked funny title on a topic not enough people are following.
PsiFighter37
So who’s to blame for Rhee’s rise to fame? I feel like I had never heard of her before Adrian Fenty made her chancellor of the DC school system.
Also, too, talk about that sinking a theoretically promising political career.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Words just fail me there.
Suffern ACE
I spent last night reading the memos that were released on the selling of Cathie Black to be NYC school chancellor. They were supposed to reveal why she had been selected, but all they reveal is how she was sold using Gloria Steinem and Oprah Winfrey among others. We really have a messed up approach to policy development when the question the press wants to focus on now (if anything) is why Ivanka Trump’s endorsement wasn’t sought in the Mayor’s PR blitz.
PsiFighter37
I don’t want to come off sounding like an old fogey, but having kids design their own curriculum sounds like a really bad idea.
rikyrah
so Kay,
with the Louisiana Supreme Court knocking down Jindal’s scheme..
what’s next for these jackals?
Violet
@PsiFighter37:
Yeah, me too. Where did she come from? Who was promoting her?
Thanks for the excellent post, Kay.
Facts are for losers. What you believe is all that matters. These people are insane.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Violet:
I’m much more disturbed by this little story that she told:
How do you let someone like that run a school district?
Violet
@PsiFighter37: What’s wrong with that? You got something against a curriculum with learning objectives including Mastery of iPhone and Demonstrated Ability to Exist on Junk Food?
Violet
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): What the hell? Where did that come from? You didn’t link.
Suffern ACE
@Violet:
She had formed a kind of Teach For America knock off and had managed to get heavily responsible for recruiting the school teachers for Washington DC. I think she had the endorsement of Joel Klein/Bloomberg and Broad money.
burnspbesq
At this point, Kay, it’s pretty clear what you’re against.
What are you for?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Violet: Sorry, it’s from wikipedia
Kay
@rikyrah:
As I read it, they just knocked down the funding. There’s tons of private money behind this. I think they can tap billionaire bucks; the Walton heirs, Gates, etc.
There’s a recent Indiana decision on vouchers that went the other way, too.
The funniest part to me is that this stuff is sold as “new”. It’s not new at all. The SCOTUS decision on school vouchers came out an Ohio case, in 2002. Ohio has had for-profit cyber-charters for years. They’re an absolute sinkhole of state money. The state capped cyber-charters, so the charter operators simply went after a new group of kids, those who needed “credit recovery” to finish high school. So the kids who are the MOST behind get the LEAST direct instruction. “Credit recovery” also boosts state graduation rates, so it’s a win-win for reformers. They can claim graduation rates are up.
artem1s
jeebus, so not only are they stealing the kids education funding they will also be grifting their parents into an Amway Ponzi scheme as well. How much you wanna bet parents will get ‘discounts’ if they sign up their neighbors kids for this edumacation shell game.
SCORE! two cons for the price of one!
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@burnspbesq: I think she’s for taxpayer-supported, public school education for all with adequately paid teaching staff.
But you already knew that, so fuck off.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Let me tell you how bad the schools have gotten: My oldest is about to graduate from High School, and I am pretty sure he learned more at the end of his 13 years than I did mine. And I took every honors, AP, and advanced class I could.
I can’t stand the “the schools are broken” argument. No, the schools are being broken.
Violet
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): Thanks. I clicked through to the WaPo story in the footnotes and they note in the article that pretty much no teacher would survive taping the kids’ mouths shut. They’d be suspended at a minimum. The comments are brutal about it. What a horrible woman.
@Suffern ACE: Thanks. I think I remember something about that now. She’s good at one thing, and that’s self-promotion.
The Moar You Know
I am blown away at the malign perfection of the “Course Choice” system. If the kid does well, they get the credit; if the kid does badly, the kids district takes the hit for the low test scores.
It’s “privatize profits, socialize losses” taken to the logical extreme: “heads I win, tails you lose”.
What a fucking horrible world, full of horrible people that do this kind of shit.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Violet: Yeah, suspended at least. Maybe that’s why she stopped teaching after three years and started her bullshit non-profit. I’d imagine lawsuits would have been the order of the day if one of my kids’ teachers had pulled that stunt.
Trakker
When historians in 2100 examine the immense poverty in what was once the richest society in the world they will conclude once and for all that free market capitalism is the most toxic economic system ever devised. We will be the textbook example of a literate, affluent society cheerfully ceding all our wealth to the rich, all the while chanting “We’re Number One!”
rikyrah
Rhee wasn’t even qualified to BE A TEACHER IN THE WASHINGTON, DC SCHOOLS
and she was put IN CHARGE OF THEM
think on that.
Kay
@burnspbesq:
Burns, it isn’t just me. I’ve written about this person before here, Gary Miron, who is professor of education at Western Michigan University.
He was a huge charter supporter, on the theory that they would be locally (and democratically) run “innovation schools.”
80% of Michigan charters are now for-profit chains. He’s reduced to arguing that his grand idea was somehow subverted. He sounds distraught when he testifies.
I guess his idea was subverted, I believe he was well-intentioned, but Jesus Christ. How naive were the well-intentioned reformers?
Deregulate, add profit, bust unions, make 15 billionaires the driving force, and what happens? They can’t regulate the for-profits in Ohio. They bought the freaking statehouse.
How many times do we have to to try this private market-driven/public money idea before we say it’s reckless and dangerous and it always ends the same way? It was going so great in health care we decided to expand it to K-12 education? WTF?
Cassidy
@Violet: You know, if this wasn’t coming from the school reform grifters and the right wing grifters who try to destroy everything and suck all the money out of it, I could actually see this as a positive.
For instance, we’re moving in about two weeks and we’ll be in the same county, but zoned to different schools. My oldest is in all advanced/ Honors/ gifted classes, but the new school doesn’t offer all that. So now, we’re going to ahve to figure out a way to get her to her old school all next year because it’s the better one. I could see something like this as beneficial to advanced kids who are at schools with substandard curriculums, if it was coming from the right group of people with the right intent.
mouse tolliver
BREAKING!
The MSM will turn Benghazi into a major scandal whether the general public gives a shit or not. And even if there’s no there there.
Watching L’il Luke and Kelly O’Donnell dissecting the talking points on MSNBC right now.
Yatsuno
@rikyrah: Yeah, this. Someone should check out her net worth and see just how much her little grift is enriching her bank account. No doubt there’s a few checks from a Koch in there somewhere as well.
AHH onna Droid
Louisiana dad blast motgerfucking godbothering ignant bloody minded thieves!
Couldnt read op. Too ragey.
the Conster
@mouse tolliver:
CNN too – but, with all the dissection, no one can really explain why the changes in talking points matters.
Suffern ACE
@mouse tolliver: Yep. For four straight days, every time I’ve walked passed the TV in the lobby, CNN has been on Cleveland. But now, they’re switching over to Benghazzi.
RSR
Hey, thanks for all the digging you all do here on so-called Education Reform. We’re getting royally screwed here in Philadelphia, and while it’s taken the union here a while to get ramped up, they’re now in fighting shape, and it’s about to go down. The kids are walking out of school and marching in the streets to district HQ in the thousands to protect their rights (twice this week alone!).
I especially loved this quote from the Constitution High School here in Philly. When the students were concerned about repercussions for their march, a teacher told them, ‘This is Constitution High, you have the right to peaceably assemble.’ ow.ly/kNRYx
I’ll be passing this post on to my wife, who is the union rep in her building.
Thanks again!
SiubhanDuinne
I’m not very good at math. Help me out with this:
Violet
@Cassidy: I agree. Independent studies are designed like that at the college level. You design your own course of study, working with your adviser. That can work really well, so long as the student is motivated and the adviser has a good handle on how to help the student design a good course for themselves. Otherwise it can be rather haphazard.
I’m not against student-designed curriculum in some cases, but as a solution for school issues, I don’t see it working all that well as a whole.
Suffern ACE
@SiubhanDuinne: Lets see 16/hour works out to about 32,000 per year for an 8 hour day with 2 weeks unpaid vacation. So 75K would be for working would be working 52 weeks of 18 hour days with no vacation. So 75K would be working 36 hour days for six months…
MomSense
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
“I can’t stand the “the schools are broken” argument. No, the schools are being broken”
This. We have experienced 30 years of systematic attacks on teachers, unions, taxes, funding, school nutrition, etc. Then to make believe there are no consequences for this we talk tough about accountability, fund massive testing regimes (owned by private companies) where the punishments all go to the teachers and the students and not to the assholes who have been intentionally breaking our schools.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suffern ACE:
Where do I sign up?
PsiFighter37
Schooling is a tough thing to figure out, mainly because there are exogenous factors (like parenting) that will have a huge impact on how well a kid learns.
That said – I went through public schools and I turned out just fine. Why pay a bajillion dollars to go to private school?
The Moar You Know
@Suffern ACE: This just proves that nothing about the entire program is aimed towards people with an education.
Kay
@RSR:
I’ve been following Newark and Chicago, so I’ll add Philadelphia! I’m in a rural district, fewer kid-units, so I think the ROI isn’t sufficient to inspire “reform” :)
I was so sad to read one of the reports from Newark. One of the kids said “they don’t like the yellow bus, they like the charter bus.”
Ya know, they pick this stuff up, from the “adults” in Leadership Positions. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Sly
@PsiFighter37:
Joel Klein, Clinton Administration lawyer turned NYC Schools Chancellor turned News Corp. lackey. Rhee was working at the New Teacher Project, an NYC organization she founded that trains professionals to become teachers, when Klein recommended her to Fenty for D.C. Schools Chancellor.
RaflW
@Suffern ACE:
We really have a messed up approach to policy development when ALEC still calls the shots after the discredit they’ve been earning.
But as has been noted since time immemorial, accountability is for you, sukahs.
Violet
@Kay: What’s the difference in buses besides the color? Does the charter bus have nicer seats, a/c or heat, a bathroom, etc.? If there’s no difference but the color, then yeah that sounds like something they got from parents.
burnspbesq
@aimai:
That’s not a bad wish list. Which taxes are you planning to increase in order to fund it?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@burnspbesq: All of yours, for starters.
burnspbesq
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
We’re all for that, but the political will to make it happen and fund it properly doesn’t exist. Which you know, so fuck you right back.
aimai
@Kay: Thank you again, Kay, for all you do to make these issues better understood. I think that we are under attack here in MA, from rumblings and rumors in the news. Eli Broad has a pretty good reputation here because of the Broad institute, but that just makes the combination of his money/interests and education all th emore toxic.
Kay
@Violet:
I don’t know. I was just listening to a video clip.
I just think this thing is really profound for people. The language in Chicago is so passionate, on the public school “side”. I think there is not an understanding of what public schools ARE to some of these neighborhoods or communities. I’ve said this before, but I may be more sympathetic to what they’re saying because public schools here are really more than “schools”. They’re very much the center of the town. Translate that to a “neighborhood” in a city, and I completely get what they’re saying. Further, I honestly do not think that Obama or Emmanuel or Duncan “get” that. It’s not a matter of just dropping a kid at a better school. With school closures, they’re talking about leaving a hole in their neighborhood.
aimai
@burnspbesq:
Obviously that’s flat out wrong. Kay writes extensively on how we aren’t “all for that” so it can’t be taken for granted. In addition, raising public awareness of what is being done with our tax dollars is precisely the remedy needed for complacent know nothings *like you* who don’t grasp that the public funding is, in fact, there–that’s what the billionaires are fighting for. The money is there and they want to control it. If we could explain to the taxpayers and parents that the money is there, it is to be used for their children, and that Rhee et al are simply stealing it from the already functioning schools we would be getting somewhere. In conclusion: fuck off with your bad self. You are not contributing anything to this discussion, as usual.
The Moar You Know
@burnspbesq: Personally, all of them. There’s fewer things more important to the nation than educating the next generation, and if somebody’s going to have to pay more – or if I’m going to have to pay more – then I can just suck it up and do my patriotic duty.
NonyNony
@burnspbesq:
Jesus burnsie what crawled up your ass and died today?
The Moar You Know
@aimai: I like Burnsie most of the time, but he has some big blind spots and this just happens to be one of them.
burnspbesq
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
Works for me, but I’m willing to bet that you pay the same ones I do. Ready to do your fair share?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@aimai: Said much more eloquently than I could. “Political will” my ass.
aimai
@burnspbesq:
I missed this: I plan to increase your taxes, you bumpkin. We already pay plenty of taxes that go to the schools, the important thing is to quantify for parents and legislators that it has to be spent on issues at the base of education: safe schools, full on libraries, arts and sports. The emphasis on testing as the way of knowing how children do is quite expensive too, you know, but rather than spending the money on the children’s experience of learning you are spending the money on test prep and test companies. I am just advocating for a way of helping people grasp what a bricks and mortar school is for–because I agree with Kay that schools are an important part of community building and of citizenship experience for children over and above their mere educational requirements. And I think all public spaces should be prioritized, as to money, over fantasies of “distance learning” which are not appropriate to small children and teenagers.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@burnspbesq: Somehow I doubt our tax percentages or burdens are equal, mr. tax avoidance lawyer. But to answer your question, yes, I’m more than happy to do my fair share. Now, let’s talk about what’s “fair.”
John M. Burt
It really does make sense to suppose that private for-profit schools could operate more efficiently and provide a better education for students. I can see how people could be sold on it.
But now that it has been amply demonstrated that it doesn’t work, why are we still throwing money at corporate school chains?
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
Not to mention private prisons. The only word for this is evil. Evil and obscene.
RaflW
@C.Montgomery’Monty’Burns:
The political will has been sapped by shitstain “I got mine, I’m pulling up the ladder” types and “urban school districts can choke and die, I live in a suburb” types for a generation.
Either an educated general populace is a social good, or we’ve decided that 19th century social Darwinism is what we accept in service to the seemingly all-holy “low taxes.” I reject option two, and am willing to help pay for it.
AHH onna Droid
@PsiFighter37: They do it at some private schools, also in upper middle class home schooling. I think Lincoln Sudbury is the name of an alternative school thats been doing this for years.
And I recall having input in some classes in regular public school. Depended on the teacher and whether there was an end exam looming.
End exams might be okay for math and basic science but they disincentivise everything US public schools do right.
cvstoner
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Good tag line!
Kay
@aimai:
The schools aren’t any cheaper, in Ohio anyway. They actually add a layer of administration, which should have been anticipated, because of course they are run by two groups.
In this state, the main achievement of charters is to lower teachers wages.
I just have a real simple question. If the money isn’t going to teachers and it isn’t going to transportation, and it isn’t going to improved results, where it is going? Why are they paying 10 or 20k less to teachers? I thought the objective here was GREAT teachers. They’re going to get there by cutting wages 20%? Come on.
Are there good charter schools? Sure. Obviously not in Cleveland, for example, where they were sold as “better” (but are not) but I’m sure they exist in Ohio. But there’s also a ton of good public schools.
RSR
@Kay: That’s great, thanks.
A wonderful advocate for public schools is @TeacherSabrina on twitter. She’s been a classroom teacher in Denver, but now works for AFT in DC. A good resource. (She was at the SXSW ed forum John attended, but I wasn’t able to get them in touch.)
For Philadelphia specific info, The Philadelphia Public School notebook – thenotebook.org/ – is very good, as is local schools advocate Helen Gym on twitter @ParentsUnitedPA. ‘Mainstream’ press has ed beat at philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/
Best,
Ryan
RaflW
@John M. Burt:
@SiubhanDuinne:
There is this massive, and I do mean long-term, deeply funded and hugely adopted/spread mythology that corporations are more efficient.
As if none of actually work in corporations. Good lord, people! Do you not see the waste, the inefficiencies, the Dilbertian horrors of your own workplaces and extrapolate them to private prisons, schools, hospitals?
The rentier class just wants to suck govt profits. Plain and simple.
GxB
@Trakker: Well, capitalism has it’s share of problems, but it is the lack of accountable oversight (i.e. government) that is the primary concern. Supply and demand is really a force of nature, and capitalism is really the best thing going to meet those needs; it’s corruption that we must fight tooth and nail. Not that I don’t disagree with your assessment that future historians will look back at the early 21st century with some significant sorrow.
More to topic. I saw Rhee was on Maher a few weeks back – I had to skip that portion. That woman is a vulture. Even so I heard the closing comment from Bill was along the lines of “Well, that is fascinating and I wish we could speak longer on the issue” (kindly tone, not patronizing) accompanied with polite applause. How she got out of there without a gallon of tar and 20 pounds of feathers affixed to her loathsome carcass is beyond me.
burnspbesq
aimai:
Pronouns are funny things; they’re capable of being misunderstood. Perhaps I should have said “this commentariat” rather than “we.”
Perhaps in some states. In California, where I live, and many others, it’s so obviously false as to be laughable. And I think you know that.
Look, my kid got a great education at a fantastic charter school, so you’re never going to sell me on the idea that all charter schools are inherently evil. Nor are you ever going to sell me on the idea that there is nothing wrong with public education in this country that can’t be fixed with more resources and less oversight.
I actually agree that most of the “solutions” currently on offer are bad. But identifying and killing off the bad ones is only half of what’s needed, and a recurring theme of Kay’s posts is an absence of suggestions for other solutions that are worth trying.
Kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Our local jail is now privatized. It’s in a complex, and the juvenile detention facility for 4 counties is on the grounds. Thankfully, the juvenile lock-up is still a state entity, or we’d end up with a Pennsylvania-style “cash for kids” scandal.
RSR
@Kay
>> failing to need to bus children.
That caught my eye, because here in Philly, it’s the opposite. The public school district doesn’t bus many children (special needs, and some younger kids.) because most are already very near their neighborhood schools. Yet the charter code here requires the school district to pay for buses to get the charter kids from all over to their charter of choice.
It’s just another way to suck more money out of the existing system as quickly as possible.
Kay
@RSR:
Oh, thanks. I’m not a Twitter person, but I get half my reading from public school teachers on Twitter. I love how they all Tweet at night, because they’re WORKING during the day :)
I get a kick out of the difference between the two Twitter groups. The huge reform non-profits Tweet, but the stuff is all marketing-speak. It sounds like paid interns. The public school people respond and sound like actual human beings. It’s jarring, the difference, to a reader.
elliecat
Interestingly, just this morning a teacher I volunteer with was talking about products vs teaching. She was complaining that any time our district administration sees good results, they find out what book or program the teacher was using and then make everyone else use it. When other teachers don’t get the same results, administration says, oh crummy program, let’s drop it. Then they look for a new magic product.
What they constantly miss is the teaching element—HOW the teacher is using the product and what they are doing in addition to it. The teacher who got 100% of her students to pass the writing test didn’t do it by using a 9-week course of X writing program. She used X writing program but she had her students writing every day, in every subject, for the entire school year. That’s how the students learned to write. Of course no one bothered to find that out (except the teacher I work with), and anyway you can’t package that and sell it, so administration is not so interested.
aimai
@burnspbesq:
A charter school is a public school–paid for with public tax money. If you didn’t understand that you don’t really have anything to contribute to this discussion.
Cassidy
@Violet: Of Course. If we had a healthy school system that was well-funded and well rounded, this could be another tool to enrich education.
@John M. Burt: Because they have bought the state legislatures and stripped out accountability and any weapons the people have to fight back agains them. Their grift has been turned into law.
gene108
@Kay:
From what I’ve read the initial push for charter schools was to have them operate as part of a local public school system, sort of like a magnet school or some other type of school that offers a specialty curriculum.
They would be places where new education methods could be observed for efficacy before using them system wide.
I don’t think anyone ever really thought people would try to subvert the public school system to make a profit, because I think most people felt there was generally universal acceptance of the benefit of a universally literate population produced by free public education.
I think on the latter point, we have all been naive.
Apparently there is a cross-section of very rich people in this country, who don’t have a problem with returning America to Gilded Age standards.
weaselone
@John M. Burt:
Why would that make sense? In a world of perfect competition populated by Homo Economicus it might yield fantastic, low-cost schools with lean profit margins, but that is not this world. In this world you get slick marketing campaigns, bought politicians, and maximization of the funds going into the pockets of the owners and/or management teams.
Rugosa
@artem1s: I caught this one – to make 75k in six months (or less!) at $16/hr, you’d have to work about 25.5 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the entire 26 weeks. So they’re looking for people who are bad at math to sell a worthless product.
geg6
@aimai:
For real, Jeebus. And he says he’s a lawyer. Read the fucking statutes that created them. And why would there even be a need for charters if they were private. Their management companies are often for profits, but the schools are public.
PaulW
“They think that the private sector can educate our kids more cheaply.”
Cheaply does NOT mean Better.
/headdesk
Tone in DC
Just had to throw this out there, a question for anyone who knows (even a blaapark figure).
What is the Department of Education’s budget annual budget? How much federal money are Rhee and her fellow Bain Capital people looking at?