A reader from Washington State sends this comment:
Here is a satirical “Recipe for How To Change The Nation’s Schools.” I am a 33 year classroom teaching veteran currently working on the campaign to stop the charter school initiative in WA state. It doesn’t look good as Bill Gates and friends spend $9 million on ads (we have no ads).
RECIPE for Taking over a Nation’s Public Schools
Ingredients:
• A Few Super Wealthy Families (that have never attended public schools)
• Powerful Religious Groups convinced that what is wrong with the nation is caused by public education.
• Lobbyists for Private Corporations Waiting To Cash In on Public Money.
• A Political System that allows legislation to be “bought” where campaign money is uncontrolled.
• The illusion that the Public School System is Broken (despite the fact that it has steadily gotten better over time according to the NAEP)
• A few convincing movies to create a negative version of public schools to sway public sentiment.
• A pretense at reform by mandating progress on test scores with unattainable, unsupported goals that ensure turmoil and failure. Tie funding to those scores so they become all consuming. Also, remember that testing is big business for our friends.
• Someone to Blame: Teacher Unions (this is an especially important ingredient since they are the only organization with enough influence to stop the process of taking over the public schools)
Directions:
Put all the ingredients together, stir well. When the time is right, buy legislation with millions and millions of dollars that puts into place the kind of privately controlled schools you really want. Also, do this in a way that further weakens neighborhood public schools by stealing their funding and resources.
Finally, sit back and enjoy you what you have created: A new version of Public Schools where teacher’s cannot unionize, where creationism can be taught as scientific truth with public funds, and where corporations can better control education of the public more to their liking while their friends cash in on the profits.
The frosting on the cake: Yes, it was a little expensive buying these ingredients, but now we have the public permanently financing our project!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And in the cities, let’s also not forget to add some neoliberal African American politicians (Obama, Booker, et. al.) who can provide a Black mask for the disenfranchisement of local parents, while their neighborhood public schools are destroyed and resources diverted to charter and online privateers.
No argument here. I’ve seen it inch in this direction since 1968. Then it became a landslide after I retired.
Watch “60 Minutes” on TV. The show is archived online. The Turkish owner of a number of charter schools is fleecing the system. He gets work visas for Turks to teach. The English teacher was interviewed and I could not understand him. The pay scale looks very good, but each teacher needs to kick back 40% to the school. Private from profit companies are formed to supply charter schools with materials at inflated prices.
I agree with Michael. The sellouts are a big part of the recipe. It is a free for all in Michigan. There is no accountability and the CEOs are raking in a lot of money while shortchanging staff and students. It boggles the mind.
Here in England, we are following the same ‘recipe’!
This is my story of what I think is behind this and why it’s so widespread.
The wealthy in any society, America or whereever, have always been and will always be in charge. In the US, we embarked on this grand experiment that held the promise of a better life for everyone by giving a tiny bit of freedom and power to everyone, no matter if they were rich or not. It worked and for a long time, the wealthy put up with it. It felt good and after all, they were benefitting from the growing wealth more than anyone else, so why not.
But then at some point, things changed. Sure, the growing middle class was nice to have around, because they had a little security and some disposable income, so they were a solid market for the stuff wealthy people wanted to sell them. But they had some problems, too. For one thing, their kids went to school and many of them even went to college and became educated and uppity. Not good. Then, they became harder to control and even began to organize to wield political power. Really not good. So the wealthy folks decided to call a halt to this experiment that was obviously going wrong fast. They recalled the good old days when people would work long, hard dangerous hours for barely enough to stay alive and spend everything they earned at the company store, because they had no options. If only they could go back to those days, the whole free-market capitalism thing would start to make sense again. Well, it was maybe too late in America, but there is a whole world out there. Maybe by starting the experiment over again in a fresh Petri dish like China or Mexico or India, where the people were more desperate and had lower expectations for their lives, they could recover the golden days again.
To make this happen was not going to be easy, but it would be possible. First of all, you’d have to be fairly subtle, or you’d have a rebellion on your hands. The middle class would have to be let down easy. So you start out by not calling the people “citizens” any more, but calling them “consumers” instead. Use the power of your media outlets to let them know that they have no worth other than their ability to acquire stuff. At the same time, you slowly begin moving the good manufacturing jobs to the new Petri dish, while retaining the middle class as your primary market. Because the good jobs were leaving, average wages were flat or decreasing, but you convince them that their lives are better than ever by making cheap, easy credit available to them. Few even noticed what was happening. And the real beauty of this plan is that you were loaning them their own savings that had been invested in the giant banks. This couldn’t last forever, so eventually there was a big crash and a lot of hullaballoo and the government needed to step in and save the day, but the desired outcome was achieved: These uppity middle class folks in America were now starting to get a little better perspecitve on things. With the good jobs shipped overseas and their houses now worth half of what the banker said they were worth last month, they were once again ready to become good little servants. So they abandoned their unions and began doing jobs that they wouldn’t have considered before for wages they wouldn’t have considered before.
There was still one problem. Teachers. This damn public school system, which had seemed like such a good idea earlier in the experiment, when an educated populace was good for business, had an unintended side effect. The people became critical thinkers. They started to learn their own history and the workings of their government. This was the root of the whole problem. Plus, the teachers were public employees and their jobs were still paying decent wages with the benefits that everyone else used to have.
But the wealthy folks were clever. They had thought this problem through, too. What they needed to to was to convince the people that the schools really weren’t educating their kids, after all. So early on, they created some scary stories like “Why Johnny Can’t Read” and “A Nation at Risk” to get people started thinking poorly of their schools and teachers. Then they created an impossible task for the schools: “Make all the children above average.” Of course, they didn’t tell the general public that this is what they were doing, because no one would go for that, so they called it “No Child Left Behind.” Well, the schools just kept not being able to do what was impossible, especially because the moms and dads were now working harder than ever to convince everyone that they still have worth because they can buy stuff, so there’s no time or energy left for parenting. So the schools get to do the parenting on top of the already impossible task of making all the kids above average.
Then the politicians who worked for the rich people began telling a new story: “These fat cat teachers with their middle class incomes and health insurance and retirement plans? There the real reason you can’t make ends meet, Mr. and Mrs. Consumer. Plus, look at the results–the schools are failing. Here’s what we’ll do. Vote for us, and we’ll cut the pay for the lazy, greedy teachers and give you more educational choice. For instance, our wealthy friends have started a school across town using public funds that promises to get better results than the public school. Honest. They promise. They even made a movie about it, so you can trust them. Don’t pay attention to the test results. Those only apply to the loser public schools. Trust us. This choice is better.” The part of the story they didn’t tell is that the new school across town isn’t really teaching. All it does is prepare kids for testing, which is mostly irrelevant to real life. And, when all you do is test and prepare to test, there is no time to become a critical thinker, who knows how to find out the truth. You know, a citizen.
The moral of the story is that if you are a member of the wealthy ruling class, everything that has been happening in the last few decades is finally starting to come together. A growing servant class, desperate and easily controlled has become convinced to give up their votes to the wealthy ruling class, who will continue to rig the system in their own favor. This is not a win-win. It’s a win-lose. Who’s winning? Not the average American.
Your story is so true- and so frightening.