FOR-PROFITS RUNNING OUR SCHOOLS? ARE WE NUTS?

OK, which fools came up with the idea that for-profit companies should be running public schools, or any schools for that matter?  Do we want companies making profits on the backs of our children.  For-profits deceive the voters with their unfounded claims that running public, tax-supported schools for profit is the American way. 

What are voters thinking?  Do voters know that when for-profits take over, they often lower salaries, decrease benefits, increase hours, and hire and fire at will.  This may sound economical on the surface, but who benefits?   The threat to workers--“If you don’t do whatever we tell you to do, with whatever resources we decide to give you, we will find someone else who will”-- is powerful.  How can employees complain?  The education of the children does not have to improve, but, who cares?  “It’s out of our hands,” the people say, and they are right.  By then, it’s too late.  The companies are accountable to no one. 

It is interesting that friends of legislators manage to open public charter schools and can make profits from running these “public schools.” Is this just another means of thanking campaign contributors?

A large segment of our government’s work has already been turned over to for-profits.  It is called outsourcing, contracting and a few other things, but it is all the same.  We citizens pay for a lot of the profits that go into the pockets of the wealthy.  Why do we allow it?  Why aren’t we screaming at this abuse of our taxes?

We are turning our children’s education over to people who seem to understand their mission as maintaining an American-born underclass to fill jobs they fear immigrants will want to come here to take.  It is also a technique for union busting since few charters have teachers who are part of a collective bargaining unit.  When private companies run charters, everything developed in their schools belongs to them and cannot be shared.  Many of us thought that charters were instituted to try out new teaching and organization strategies to improve education for all.  That’s what proponents told everyone.  I suspect that is one of the reasons the charter school movement had such momentum.

The reality is that charters, for-profit or otherwise,  are generally opened in poor communities who have already gotten the word that nothing they have to say about education or anything else matters.  Parents think they are going to get something better for their children, but that is not what happens most of the time.  Since nothing related to the basic poverty and lack of opportunity in the community changes, parents, their children, and taxpayers in general are just being taken for another ride to nowhere, and paying for the trip.

Ruth