Peter Greene comments on the Finn/Manno/Wright article about the end of public schools and locally elected school boards.

In his usual trenchant fashion.

What accountability do charters face? If they fail to meet standards of academic performance or fiscal soundness, charters are “supposed to be closed or restarted with fresh leadership.” And that’s absolutely it, because this section started with the phrase “But that’s where democracy comes in,” but now a paragraph later, democracy is a no-show. Voters don’t get a say. Taxpayers don’t get a say. Charters resist transparency vigorously. And if you are a parent who’s unhappy with some aspect of the school, you can vote with your feet– that’s it. Any other kind of vote is off the table.

We’ve seen it over and over. Check out just this single report from NBC News, profiling how the closing, turning over, or general charterizing of schools is invariably accompanied by a loss of voting rights and voice for non-wealthy, non-white communities.

Of course, privatizing means the death of democracy for the sorts of people who don’t read the Wall Street Journal. But the old kind of local control (sometimes known as democracy) is obsolete. What the world really needs is for elected officials to be replaced by boards composed of our Betters, the rich and powerful folks who need to run things without interruption from the Lessers who keep yelping and squawking and demanding some kind of voice or vote. Democracy, as these guys define it, is enhanced by giving fewer people less say. Because on opposites day, the fewer votes you get, the more democracy you have. As long as only the Right People, the Betters, have most of the money, most of the power, and most of the votes, well, then, democracy is thriving. At least on opposites day.