This article in Truth-Out was written in 2014, but it remains timely. It shows the driving force behind privatization: Greed. It contains only one error: it suggests that this is a Red State phenomenon. But there are Democratic governors who have taken large sums from the financial industry and turned into champions of school choice, such as New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Connecticut’s Dannel Malloy.
Privatization fuels fraud and corruption, while eviscerating the public good.
“In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott has made growing for-profit education one of his top priorities. And, in doing so, he helped out his political buddies and donors while screwing over Florida’s students. One of the biggest winners in Scott’s privatization push, for example, was an ALEC-linked company called K12, Inc. that actually got an “F” from Florida’s education department.
“In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Corbett has given huge legal contracts for defending his state’s voter ID suppression law to some of his top donors. Corbett is also trying to privatize Pennsylvania’s state liquor stores, a move that would mean big bucks for corporate allies like Walmart and Sheetz, a local gas station chain.
“And in Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder has handed prison food services over to corporate giant Aramark. While the move has meant big bucks for Aramark, the report suggests it’s been an absolute disaster in every other possible way. Meals are infested with maggots, employees have been caught having sex with inmates, and now there are reports that one Aramark employee actually tried to hire a prisoner to kill someone for him. All in all, not a pretty picture.
“These horror stories are a perfect example of why privatization is such a bad idea.
“Ultimately, private corporations are only interested in making money and are only really accountable to their shareholders, not “We the People.” The way they see it, it doesn’t matter if prisoners have to eat rotten meat, if students get a crappy education, or if for-profit hospitals like the ones in Texas don’t have proper staffing. All that matters is making a quick buck, and if that means screwing over the public, then so be it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Also see this: 11 Ways Chicago Is the Beating Heart of the Disastrous Charter School Agenda | Alternet http://www.alternet.org/education/11-ways-chicagos-charter-schools-have-created-public-education-nightmare
Other ways greed affects our public schools:
Halliburton In Colorado: Board Member’s Donation Shows Power Of Oil And Gas Industry http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/halliburton-colorado-board-members-donation-shows-power-oil-gas-industry-2536297
Partner Paper with Public School Parents in LA: Out-of-Town Billionaires & Trump Backers Attempt to Hijack Local School Board http://hedgeclippers.org/out-of-town-billionaires-trump-backers-attempt-to-hijack-local-school-board-election/
GREED wrecks.
what a great interview this was….Diane introduced me to Matt Bryant, and I discovered his host, Richard Eskow, casually summing up what the reality of charter schools is, as he interviews Matt about the difficulties democrats face sorting out how to react to vouchers and charters, keeping their respective dangers in proper perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpzkWsJpdts
Jeff Bryant, not Matt. More coffee, please.
This article is timely as the Florida legislature, many of whom directly benefit from the charter industry, pass a sweeping education bill, that will redirect public funds to charter schools. The diverting of public money continues despite the opposition from community groups and citizens that called legislators’ offices, sent faxes, and voiced opposition on-line.
“It contains only one error. It suggests that this [privatization] is a Red state phenomenon”
That one error is a fatal one.
“I have found a flaw”
A single fatal flaw
Collapses to the ground
Ignoring nature’s law
Is really quite unsound
Greed and power seem to be the driving force we’re now facing. Article in today’s S F Chronicle about teacher that can’t pay the rent in San Francisco. Wealthiest area and teachers can’t pay their rent. GREED!
The goal of the richest 0.1%’s, is colonialism within the U.S., a threat about which Lincoln warned . It’s a plot with great peril for the 400 richest families in the country. DeVos requires $1 mil. in security each month.
Stopping at greed as a cause, rather than a link in a longer causal chain, seems shortsighted. Maybe Charles Eisenstein is right (consider reading his chapter on evil here: https://charleseisenstein.net/books/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/eng/evil/) and our money system (through scarcity) begets greed. Maybe it’s something else. Either way, I think this is a good opportunity to think in terms of the Fundamental Attribution Error and situational factors rather than dispositional ones. I’m afraid that by casting education and larger public policy in moralistic terms, we miss the larger points.
Going once … Going twice … Gone! … to the highest bidder!
Fess up! Who’s really surprised that schools are the next gold-mine for drooling hedge-funders and tech magnates? Big Banks, Big Pharma, and Big Oil … move on over. It’s Big Education’s turn.
The lure of charter schools … with the ever-repeating money stream via taxes … was just too, too lucrative to ignore. And now the sharks are just fattening their odds and slimming their risks by ruining the long-standing public school system.
These charters are ostensible saviors of the last resort for children stuck in failing, inner-city educational mills. But the inner cities are the starting blocks. They see education in an entirely new structure and with an outcome never before considered … profit.
To cull some schools from the system … a few at a time for now … sets the pattern.
Profiteers hard-sell the “success” story and entice others to sign on … and the money siphoned from public schools further cripples already crippled schools.
It’s a classic business “build and destroy” mission.
Charter operators bully their way into new situations … which, in turn, allow others to come forward to reap profits from arming these new schools swimming in redirected taxpayer monies. Everyone is in on the action. … from software providers to textbook pushers. Even the tutoring industry gets a booster shot.
So the spigots are open and the tax monies now drain into the pockets of entrepreneurs who are more about flash than about substance. Classroom performance is now superseded by the bottom line.
Charter schools will come to dominate the scene. And in true entrepreneurial form, schools will become more and more like race cars … covered with product logos and insignias of all sorts.
Expect sport scoreboards with product info flashing all game long. Campuses will be decorated by signage that speaks to the generosity of business X and Y. We might not get a Whopper High School, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get something called the MicroSoft Magnet School for Technology. You know … something extra sexy that would awe the ordinary taxpayer into a state of silly gratefulness.
Sports’ uniforms will look like those patchy outfits race car drivers wear … with logos all over the place.
Cafeteria foods will be franchised out … even transportation will be “Uberized” in some fashion because … well … if there’s money to be made, they’ll make it.
Teachers will be properly orientated company men and women … and students will be the product. The goal is to spit and polish the product just well enough to get by quality control and then … then it’s off to the bank.
Older teachers will run for the retirement hills … and the last bit of “reform” resistance will vanish.
So, there you have it. Schools will have new ownership, but the same funding … your tax dollars. The faculties will have been rinsed free of old blood and new, conforming teacher-bots will read from the curriculum scripts exactly as they are written … and nod their heads like bobblehead dolls.
Phony civic-minded entities that wish to maximize their exposure in order to maximize their advertising clout will pay for the privilege to be associated with the scam-school.
And politicians will share in the looting of the public schools by getting loot from the looters. I’m sure you can follow that.
Taxpaying parents will have zero control over their tax dollars, and their children will be short-changed not for a few years … but for as long as they might live.
That’s the future. More and more control by fewer and fewer powerful people who control powerful mechanisms to become more powerful every day. Sounds like a tongue-twister, but it ain’t. It’s real.
Going … Going …
Denis Ian