According to Education Week, the Center for Media and Democracy and Education has released a report on America’s highest paid government workers, and they are not whom you would think of.
In education, it is Ron Packard, who until recently was CEO of K12 Inc., which manages virtual charter schools. Packard, formerly of McKinsey, was paid handsomely. The company insists its schools are public schools,” as it sucks tuition dollars away from community public schools:
“The center says Packard earned more than $19 million in compensation between 2009 and 2013, and notes that that compensation rolled in as K12 achieved a lackluster academic showing in various states. As a company, the report says that K12 took in $848 million in 2013, with $731 million derived from its “managed public schools” operations.”
Packard announced in January that he was stepping down to head a new company but will remain on the K12 board.
And you wondered why we spend so much on education? Check out the burgeoning industry of for-profits and consultants and others who tell schools what to do and how to do it but never enter a classroom.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, I agree wholeheartedly with your perspective here, but would like to add that there are countless administrators – (and at least one state Secretary of Education) in regular public schools who have little (less than 5 years) teaching experience and rarely enter a classroom, who are telling us what to do.
I am afraid that this is having a greater impact on public education.
Reporting from the First State
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NC’s education adviser to the governor fits that category. I think a couple TFA years were his only direct exposure.
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You are right. Only 2 years in the classroom and now he is the governor’s advisor. Interesting!
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Diane,
You really should add quotation marks to “governement” in the title of the post as technically the report doesn’t focus on government workers but “government” workers, i.e., CEO’s and such who make a fortune sucking on the government’s engorged teats.
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I have a couple thoughts that are indirectly related to this post.
1. If Obama wants to rate colleges now with a standardized score so that the government does not loan money to students attending schools who will not be able to pay the loans back, I think a better study than a standardized score for a school would be to investigate the alumni and see what the default rates have been among alumni from various colleges and universities and then rate them that way.
2. I know that a lot of my academically ambitious peers and I grew up in the 1990s with both parents having careers (in fact, I think that’s why my parents are not even marrieda any more, and same with many peers’ parents). In college we would sort of joke about this. This week I received an email from the Opportunity to Learn Campaign showing how community supports and PTO involvement and so forth are what make strong schools. Many students who got into more prestigious schools out of public high schools would joke (in the 1990s) about it being easy and so forth. And I recall hearing a comedy routine by a very jaded New Yorker (I forgot her name—she actually did not have a funny set that evening) in which she made a snide comment about how unnecessary her high school classes had been for her (implication that they were not challenging). And I wonder if some of the phenomenon of people being so easily jaded about public school and so easily won over by the Charter movement (those from ivy league schools and other ambitious students like those TFA recruits) are students from two-career families where the parents were not present in the PTO or involved in the school at all. The student might have been taken on excellent vacations and sent to marvelous camps, but the lack of their own parents being involved in their public school has set off a sort of resentment in the student or a taking for granted that public institution that educated them (that they think they succeeded despite the school). I wonder if those who actually had an involved parent are more the ones now supporting public school and not giving in to the Charter, voucher, TFA wave that is proving to attract ambitious folks.
So just as I propose a study on the default rate for colleges and universities alumni/ae student loans, I would also propose a study of parent involvement at the public schools of those who have abandoned any sort of commitment to the notion of public school for charters and vouchers.
It seems those who are attracted to charters and TFA may likely have had very ambitious parents who were busy with their own careers and therefore not putting in a lot of face time or sweat equity into their children’s public schools. It might explain some of the contempt or easy swaying of very smart people to abandon the notion of public school. It would definitely be a study we could learn from.
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Joanna, your suggestions for further research on loan default/repayment by college alums is a very good one, I hope someone takes them on, as that seems to be the worry from a families perspective (maybe not the predatory reformers perspective). As for the idea that the 2 career family of the 1990s has spawned the support of charters and vouchers…it appears to me that charters and vouchers have taken off in the poorer, more disenfranchised inner-cities and rural/religious South…not sure if those places are the ones I would think of having overly ambitious 2 career families back in the 1990s. Where charters and vouchers have met resistance (or maybe they have just not been pushed that far up the economic food chain yet) is in the more affluent suburbs, where it seems to me there may be more adults raised by 1990s 2 career parents. But I may be wrong. Research in this area would answer that question, too, I suppose.
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Tracy–
good points.
I think the areas where charters and vouchers have taken off are areas where disenfranchised people were already not being listened to and they did not have much so in the matter (except maybe in the south where they elected leadership eager to usher in vouchers).
In the book THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY OF URBAN EDUCATION scenarios are presented where the poor have been given no “choices,” ironically, except for charters.
The study I would like to see would be in individuals who work in TFA or in charters. Did they have parents who were on PTO, in band boosters, tutoring, helping with clubs, chaperoning at prom, chaperoning on field trips, etc? To me there could be a link between those who had parents involved in those things or not (and the career aspect may or may not be a factor, but at least in my household my parents’ careers dictated a lack of time for volunteering in my school the older I got).
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The biggest problem with basing Title IV (student financial aid) funds on student income after graduation is that those with degrees in liberal arts and social sciences –both of which include education majors– tend to receive the lowest salaries. Many colleges are very likely to stop offering such programs as a result.
This would open the door and feed right into the corporate “reformers” dream of running their own teacher prep programs. Then they could control the message in education, as well as train more people to become military style drill sergeant teachers, such as at the Relay and Match teacher training programs that are currently run by no-excuses charter schools.
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From the K12 website, “Previously, Mr. Packard served as Vice President of Knowledge Universe and as Chief Executive Officer of Knowledge Schools, a provider of early childhood education and after school programs.”
A really good investigative reporter, such as David Sirota, needs to follow the money trail on this one, because I would not be surprised if Packard is still working for Knowledge Universe. That’s because Mike Milken, a convicted felon for fraud and insider trading in junk bonds, owns Knowledge Universe and he started K12 with Packard. While expanding his KinderCare business, which is the largest for profit preschool chain in America, Milken also owned an online university and he hoped to expand and take the college global. However, the federal government knew he owned that college, despite various attempts by him to distance himself from the school, and they would not grant student financial aid under Title IV because he is a convicted felon and, ultimately, regional accreditation was withdrawn. That combo can be a death knell for US colleges, so eventually he sold the university.
However, I think Milken would like nothing more than to own top market share in the PreK-college education industry globally, so he is probably involved in Packard’s new venture. (BTW, “PreK” is a misnomer, because they serve kids from birth –and they do drill and kill from the cradle on.)
Milken has gotten much better at concealing his involvement in education though, and his brother Lowell is a key player, so it would take a whole lot of digging to reach the truth.
Milken is also a big time GOP supporter and his companies have been members of ALEC. That might be a good place to start for a great investigative reporter: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/K12_Inc.
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Great to remember that one of the founders of K-12 was Bill Bennett who was also head of USDE, and a big promoter of character education with a tone of I am holier than thou….until he saw profits flowing from this K-12 on-line program based on a huge amount of “appropriated” content from unacknowledged sources. Not surprising that others are making fortunes on this program.
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