A friend shared an invitation that came to his email.
The for-profit sector is not only lurking, it is invading.
Just think: while teachers and principals work 11hours a day, taking home salaries that barely cover the mortgage and living expenses, an equity investor will make millions from their labor.
Save the date! On January 15, there will be an exciting seminar on how to make a profit by investing in education. It is sponsored by Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP and the Parthenon Group.
The chairman for the day is Harold Levy, former Chancellor of the NYC public schools and now a partner in the Connecticut venture capital firm Palm Ventures.
The title of the conference is:
“Private Equity Investing in
For-Profit Education Companies —
How Breakdowns in Traditional Models &
Applications of New Technologies Are Driving Change”
The description:
“Private equity investing in for-profit education is soaring, and for good reason — the public and non-profit models are profoundly broken.
“This is why for-profit education is one of the largest U.S. investment markets, currently topping $1.3 trillion in value.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I keep on trying to “charge” my students for the services I provide, like letting them know what assignments they are missing, what their grade is, etc . . . . Man, they don’t cooperate well. I mean what’s one dollar to know what your grade is or fifty cents per missing assignment???
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Well just great! Now that you have advertised your price I have to drop mine to remain competitive!
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Where is this ‘conference?’ I want to make sure I’m in the front row. With a camera.
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Be prepared to pay a pretty penny to attend. How do you think the most brilliant entrepreneurs make money?
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I think the last such conference cost $1,500. Correct me if I’m wrong, someone!
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This conference costs $1,195 for admission. That keeps out the curious.
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Maybe Bill, Rupert or Mike will fund a scholarship for a lowly unionized teacher or an entrepreneurial student or parent? Do we know where it is located? The last one was kept secret possibly afraid of protests.
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Seconded. I want to know how school choice and competition can lead to historic achievement gains in my stock portfolio.
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This is the next bubble market that will crash & burn like the mortgage bubble. Accountability is for the little people.
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In my opinion, formed over 15 years of teaching in all socioeconomic brackets, in several parts of the country is that our schools should be tied in with business, but not in this way. Businesses should sponsor schools–not the other way around. I think tying the understanding of basic skills to local economies in a way that preserves the equity of what is available to all children in a given area and keeps freedom of thought going is good–but the idea that we can offer the very same education all across the country is not possible. I get brochures in my mail box about helping children in developing countries where their educations are tied to local enterprise (chickens, goats. Etc). Maybe ours would look a little different than that, but the business component in education may not be a bad thing if it is approached in a way that promotes education within the context of enterprise within communities.
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Yes, “the public and non-profit models are profoundly broken,” and the very same interests whose “disruptive innovation’ (to use their preferred euphemism) did the breaking are now poised to profit from cleaning up their own mess.
Corporate ed reformers seem to have created a perpetual motion machine, whereby the destruction of public goods and the Commons invariably results in ever greater profits and power for themselves. It will continue to work that way, until it doesn’t, and everyone is left with ashes.
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What exactly is wrong with our nation that we could even entertain, much less promote, this kind of thinking? It is not the “non-profit and public models” that are broken, as much as our common sense of decency and public good.
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But that is the fear, uncertainty and doubt campaign. Your can’t make money and rip off the taxpayers unless you convince them that there is a crisis. These people are not know for their decency and concern for the poor or middle class.
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You’re right Linda. I forgot…”Greed is good”. Or, the way I see this mentality…”Greed is God”. Sickening.
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Very well said!
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Hold on. Nobody is going to profit unless the for-profit schools produce innovations that make them more effective than our non-profit schools. What’s wrong with people investing to make that happen? I’d rather have Wall Street pay for the R&D than throw more tax dollars at the problem.
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That’s not the way it works unfortunately.
The online charter schools make big profits with bad education.
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As PT Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute.
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When the for-profit schools can avoid enrolling special ed and ESOL students (for starters), they look better on paper than public schools who can’t make any such exclusions. As long as they LOOK more effective, they get the $$$.
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For-profit schools require choice in some format. Even not-for-profit schools will require choice in some format if school vouchers are offered – which in NC, and our new republican governor, looks inevitable.
The problem is that in advertising, businesses market what will make them money, not the truth. This injection of “choice” in the education market is a racket – always has been and always will be.
If you know anything about the history of public education in the U.S. you would know that it took blood, sweat, and tears to get our schools to accept any student, anytime, regardless of any characteristic of that student. When data becomes king, and “choice” becomes queen, we have an approach to schools that is anything but democratic. Schooling will then be based on how well schools can advertise, which in many cases will not involve the truth, and it will also involve how well kids can perform so the schools can display their greatness. This may even involve gaming and cheating to transform the data into something more palatable to appease shoppers. At first glance, you may think, “what’s wrong with requiring students to perform”? As an educator I can tell you that many kids in our traditional public schools do not come to school to perform – it is my job to instill a love of learning and discovery in them regardless of their sometimes terrible home life.
Our public school system has prided itself on accepting anyone and giving them the opportunity to succeed. If the public wanted more, for whatever reason, then they could pay for a private education.
The teaching and learning environment is complicated enough without having to inject this “profit” for innovation concept. All that will provide is an even more complicated social science that centers not on how kids learn, but how well they produce high test scores.
The solution is to support public schooling in its entirety. If scores are low in a region or a school, then they ought to be targeted for more support services and wrap-around features, not scolding them with labels and closing them down.
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Yes someone profits! You think those running the school are going to work salary free until the school is an academic success? Look at the salaries and profits being made by these people. And what happens to the kids used for the R and D? They are now years along and if the innovations don’t work, which they won’t, how do they make up for the lost academic time? We can’t just say, “Oh, well that didn’t work. Back to the drawing board!”
How will they judge EFFECTIVE? Unless they are held to the same standards and testing requirements there is no valid comparison. Have you asked yourself why Obama and Duncan send their kids to schools that are able to offer all the things public schools dream of having? We could use the backing of business to help support programs but not by plundering the schools in a hostile takeover. The vilification of teachers isn’t necessary to build a community of support for public schools.
You consider it “throwing tax dollars at a problem”. Why don’t you go visit the schools and find out what is really going on? Look at how public schools really operate and ask questions, go to different schools, go to school board meetings talk to teachers in public schools. Read the laws that cover public schools. Look at the demographics.
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Here is a question for all of you:
My cousin, a special education teacher who is fully certified, was unable to get a job in a traditional school due to the economy. Instead he took a job in a charter school and teaches children with autism. According to reports, he is very successful at this and receives much gratitude from parents. However, he makes $30,000 a year in Long Island, New York, which is less than half the average salary of traditional public school teachers in his area. On the other hand, the “owner” of this charter makes much, much more money, compliments of the taxpayers of that state.
My question: Do you think the average citizen knows that this is happening? Thank you.
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No I think the average citizen doesn’t know anything a out this privatization movement unless it has directly affected them. How could we expose this school?
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No they don’t. I’ve had the same experience. I don’t think the news media does a very good job of hammering this issue and telling the public what is going on. I don’t know about your cousin’s school but the two that I have been in have teachers that are underpaid and woefully undersupplied. The number one priority appeared to be about making money.AWFUL!
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I agree the problem appears to lie with the press. For some reason, they are very pro-charter. In this morning’s L.A. Times, there was an editorial on how the charter schools in Los Angeles have improved all the public schools, ostensibly by adding a little competition. They do mention a few of the disadvantages, such as the fact that charters often push out low achievers but they do not mention the privatizing aspect, or the fact that many charter schools in California have involved fraud.
The fact that the leadership of AFT and NEA have not tried to educate the public is puzzling to me. For example, in the case of my cousin’s school, the local union leaders could write letters to the editor or publish ads designed to inform the public about salaries made by charter operators in contrast to those made by teachers. Perhaps I’m being naive but I believe that once taxpayers understand what is going on, they will put a stop to it.
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Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Secretary of Education held a press conference. He could start with “I want to clear up something that is being repeated in the press that is untrue, unfair, and damaging to our communities. The phrase “our public school system is broken” is untrue. The gold standard NAEP report shows that our students are steadily improving. Next, local, democratic control of our public schools is rapidly being privatized. Let’s have a national conversation with the American people to see if they know this and actually want it. Now, that would be the kind of stewardship worthy of a national leader in education.
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I have been wishing that Secretary Duncan would say that!
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Strange how we rarely if ever hear directly from Arne Duncan. How about a nice debate!
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Well, he is a leader in privatization and those are not his talking points. The Broad Foundation must approve his decisions. Arne could care less about the American student, parent or teacher.
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I wish I could believe that would happen, but my money is on the flying pigs….
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Mine’s on the snowball’s chance in hell!!!
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Same old same old. Greedy conservatives now see government functions as the latest way to increase their profits. K-12 should not be allowed to be run as for-profits PERIOD. Post secondary education must be held accountable and the schoolsshut down by cutting off their financial aid, if they don’t provide in-field job placement at a living wage for graduates. It was on the news this weekend how a for profit school dressed up its placement records with jobs with fancy titles while the graduate was working at Walmart and selling shoes on jobs they had gotten on their own. Meanwhile, the public vocational schools, colleges, and universities must be beefed up and funded in spite of the conservatives intention to support private industry so that any person who wants to go to school can do so without being stuck on a waiting list for a year or more before a spot opens up.
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I think this conference calls for a visit from The Yes Men.
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