Alan Singer reviews the ways that hedge funds will benefit by the privatization of public funding for public schools.
Consider Michigan, just one state:
Michigan, Betsy DeVos’ home state, has 1.5 million children attending public elementary and secondary schools and spends about $11,000 per student. If charter networks operated all of Michigan’s schools, we are talking about $16.5 billion. Now that is real money! The charter network could stash away profits of $5.5 billion just my having high teacher turnover.
But that’s not the only way the hedge fund charter networks and private schools will make money. Inexperienced teachers need scripted lessons, staff development, and supervision, so the hedge fund schools can outsource these activities to subsidiary companies. They can also buy books, tests, supplies, computer software and hardware, and guidance services from their own companies and award maintenance contracts to themselves.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If only the public knew what was really going on behind the curtain…
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It’s up to us to inform the public by reposting blogs like this one, talking to everyone and taking action through our unions and other organizations that support public education
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I said ed reform liberals would capitulate on Trump’s privatization, and they are:
“The system would then stop funding schools and begin funding families. Every child would be given an annual scholarship. Poor children, who often enter school needing extra attention, would get bigger scholarships. Children with disabilities would get more, too.”
That is a backpack voucher. They can all it whatever they want but that’s what it is.
Democrats have now adopted the most far Right version of reform. They are now indistinguishable from conservatives. They’re all supporting “backpack vouchers”.
Instead of public schools we’ll have a set of approved private entities where we can redeem our voucher. It’s literally the Barry Goldwater plan- it can’t go any further Right.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/school-choice-for-children-who-have-none/2017/01/01/60479c34-cead-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html?utm_term=.8fd980b61eb5&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1
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The Post article was painful to read. Praising Rhee, high stakes testing, and privatization again? Rheeally? No mention of Erasergate. No mention of middling charter scam performance or the denial of experienced teachers to the most impoverished families. No mention of the money being scammed away, or of the authoritarian corporatism of local school boards. No mention of taping shut the mouths of communities.
Chiara, how do you have the fortitude to slog through all the Rheformsters’ propaganda? You are strong indeed! Thank you.
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I think it’s essential to read their “thought leaders” because these things start at the upper reaches of the “movement” and then they roll them out nationally.
I knew they’d all end up supporting backpack vouchers. It’s the natural and inevitable culmination of everything they’ve done for the last 20 years.
They simply don’t value existing public schools. They see schools as service providers. It’s a fundamentally different view from that of people who support public schools as a public good. There’s no reconciling the two positions- it isn’t a minor disagreement. It goes to the heart of the thing.
I love how they present this stuff as if they invented it. Backpack vouchers have been a far Right goal for 50 years.
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Chiara,
I just wrote a rebuttal to that article. You beat me to the punch!
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They’ll say backpack vouchers are “experimental” but as you know ed reform experiments never fail. Every ed reform experiment is expanded, regardless of “results”, because it’s not actually about “evidence”, it’s about ideology.
Ed reform can’t fail- it can only be failed. The response to every ed reform failure is more ed reform.
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Charters are never are held accountable for the mess they have made. They can pack up their tents and sell their wares somewhere else. They destroy neighborhoods and abandon ship as they see fit. Nobody looks at what all the disruption does to the children and families.
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Chiara, you are really on a roll! Your analysis of reformer antics are very insightful: “They see schools as service providers. It’s a fundamentally different view from that of people who support public schools as a public good.”
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Fred Hiatt has spent way too much time “inside the Beltway” and has drunk the education reform Kool-Aid.
Rhee was a disaster, and the fact that Hiatt thinks that she is golden speaks volumes about him, none of it good.
But then, Hiatt also listened to Obama, Arne Duncan, et al, and their enthusiasm for Race to the “Top,” Common Core, charters, and the testing and teaching to the test regimen.
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We can only hope for more of this before total assimilation:The Golden Era of Hedge Funds Draws to a Close With Clients in Revolt.
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They’ll be another financial crash w/in the next decade. They learned nothing. They’ll burn it down again.
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I’m not as optimistic with the time frame as you are Chiara.
But, oh, did they learn. Some of them will profit immensely off the suffering of most.
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Also, DeVos is identical to Jeb Bush on anti-public school policies.
That means that at the end of Trump’s first term the Bush Family will have directed the course of US public education for the last TWENTY YEARS.
Bush II, Obama and now Jeb Bush. 20 years in the anti-public school echo chamber.
I’m surprised public schools survived at all with so many powerful opponents. They’re really admirably resilient.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/jeb-bushs-consolation-prize-233097
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A frightening but already functioning modern-day reality: “The charter network could stash away profits of $5.5 billion just my having high teacher turnover.”
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5.5 billion stolen off the backs of the most innocent, the students.
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If we consider that Singer mostly focuses his discussion on New York abuses, this is the tip of the iceberg. The only reason New York has any insight into the problem, is that the state has some degree of oversight and accountability. New York also does not accept for profit chains. As we can see, there are still lots of opportunities for profit in non-profits and inflated administrative salaries. In states like Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania with minimal government intervention, there are many more opportunities for grifters and scammers. Many states’ laissez-faire oversight of privatization creates education vandals that steal from public school students, and the general public is unaware of the problem.
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Aside from the fact that the government is complicit in the closing of public schools and the financing and opening of charters, and creating dual licensing (or perhaps for the TFA, NON-licensing) requirements, etc. – why aren’t the charter chains investigated using RICO? They are buying up real estate, they are circumventing the regulations and lobbying for more friendly deregulation for themselves, etc. Maybe just a stupid notion on my part, but how is KIPP, and the like, allowed to proliferate? Why is TFA given tax exempt status? Why is my government bequeathing millions (billions?) to TFA?
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Nonsense. Please tell me the name of one of these supposed “hedge fund charter networks”. Not a charter that gets donations from hedge funders, not a bank that does real estate loans to charters, but whatever the heck it is that Singer thinks he’s talking about.
Then tell me one hedge fund that makes money on charter schools. The only one I know of is Whitney Tilson’s shorting of K12 because he thinks they’re horrible.
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