Gene V. Glass of Arizona State University is one of the nation’s top education researchers. He has recently watched the proliferation of charter schools in Arizona, which is often called “the Wild West” of the charter movement. Deregulation means that laws prohibiting nepotism and conflicts of interest don’t apply to charter schools. Self-dealing is okay. For-profit charters can’t be audited because they are “private corporations.”
Now Glass finds a new phenomenon: when a private school couldn’t attract enrollment, and its finances were in bad shape, it converted to being a charter. No tuition. All paid by the public. The free market failed, says Professor Glass,and crony capitalism came to the rescue.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So how can I get in on the gravy train?
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Buy a politician. Unfortunately, inflation has hit that market pretty hard – they’re getting awfully pricey.
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We had an inadvertently amusing situation here. We had what appeared to be a religious school (they’re publicly-funded in Ohio, with vouchers) where we then heard they had “become” a charter school.
No one has any idea what they are. It really doesn’t matter when you redefine “public” to mean “publicly-funded”, which is what ed reform has done.
Under their definition my health insurance company is “public” because they receive federal subsidies and they’re regulated. I’m thinking about wandering in there and telling them I own the place. See how THAT goes 🙂
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Calling all the lawmakers who are pushing kids towards STEM careers. Might want to caution them not to borrow too much money for college:
“Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”
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One example out of many from all across the country I am sure.
One more scam practice that business is allowed to use as a tool to increase profits. Their paid for politicians have made it legal.
Ethics and business practices can no longer be used in the same sentence.
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We called that in business “digging your own grave”. Businesses are on a binge making fixed costs variable. One way to do this is make everyone a temp worker. Even more profitable, bring in H1bs who are essentially cheap, indentured servants enslaved under rules that keep them quiet and complaint. The American workers are fired and offered meager severance or threats of bad references just when they are desperate. The effect is an America public insecure, fearful, complicit, and unwilling to spend in the economy. A downward spiral.
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When I read the story yesterday, I wrote Disney an email telling them how appalling this is and that they are selling off America. I told them I hope a lot of people boycott the parks.
Disgusting!
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The City of Seattle just hired the DC couple who sponsored a failed Arizona charter school – for financial and academic failures. The Aguirres are now a power couple earning over $320,000 between them. Ms. Aguirre was hired to oversee the city’s new preschool program; Mr. Aguirre, a former employee of Michelle Rhee in DC, is the new director of the city parks commission. Somehow, no one did due diligence about the Arizona issue and neither of the Aguirres disclosed their record in Arizona.
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Crony capitalism is killing our country and NOT just in education. The real intellectuals in this country have been shouting this out for some time now. It is time for our populace. to listen.
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Dr. Ravitch, you should be ashamed of your analysis! To simplify the painful loss of identity of what was likely a private religious school to “crony capitalism” is shallow at best. First, the inability of private schools to compete with free schools is nothing new. It began during the nineteenth century with the growth of the free public schools system (Engelhardt, Education Reform, p. 40). More recently, in 2008, the US Dept of Ed documented this phenomenon in “Preserving a Critical National Asset: America’s Disadvantaged Students and the Crisis in Faith-based Urban Schools.”
Second, why impute selfish motives on any school struggling to survive? Most private school educators enter the field with hearts to serve children for much less pay than their public school counter-parts. Since charters have been in Arizona since 1994, it is unlikely this school saw “public money” as a windfall that would support their educational vision.
Third, it is an error to say that “capitalism has failed” in a situation where public money favors one school over another. Even with its diverse school choice laws, Arizona’s private schools are not tuition free for everyone. Families who value small school environments are frequently (unfairly) drawn away from private schools not for a better education, but for a less expensive one.
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