John Ogozalek, a graduate of Vassar College who teaches in upstate New York, wrote the following:
HALF the consumers in the U.S. have just had their financial pants pulled down in public, so to speak. And, it’s all due to the bungling of credit reporting giant Equifax, which was hacked yet again.
Meanwhile, citizens continue to be force fed the lie that the free market is always better -better schools, better health care, better everything.
And, here’s the real kick in the teeth. CNBC (see link below) reported that if you agree to Equifax’s offer to help monitor your credit, you “may be giving up key consumer rights”. Wow.
But readers of Diane’s blog are well familiar with this narrative. We’ve been living it for years now, as our schools are pillaged by the greedheads.
They screw you over, then use the chaos and confusion they’ve sown to screw you over even MORE.
The cheapos at Equifax are offering a measly one year of their dubious credit monitoring. Ha! Anyone who has ever had their credit information and identity stolen knows you enter a sickening, house of mirrors world where months, even years of your time are chewed up just reclaiming your “self”, your good name. You call a supposed number to get help, then have to detail your private, financial information over the line. But, how do you even know THAT NUMBER is really legit?
Here’s the truth about the free market. When you call to give them business, there’s always a person there who is ready to take your money. But, when you call to get help, well, take a number. Or, get ready to push lots of numbers, and maybe talk to someone eventually,. This is what privatization of schools will bring us. You are a number.
I’m always amazed by the school where I work. The PUBLIC school. Call there on any given day and within a minute you’ll not only have a real person helping you, but you can go right to the top and talk to one of our principals, too.
I had an issue a couple years ago with a classified student who needed some assistance and within one hour I had a team of wonderful teachers and counselors all over the challenge. And, it was solved in a great way. This is the norm where I work.
What’s that song say….you don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s gone?
Save our public schools!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Was this a “failure” or is this exactly what the “free market” (sic) was designed to do? After all, I’m sure there’s a good market for all of this “inadvertently” liberated data.
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I don’t know if you guys have seen this, but it’s interesting as far as where ed reform is “going”:
“Danner: So our last two years, we sold this to schools and grew to 40,000 students. But we realized in the process that the key differentiator with a school revenue model is the quality of your salesforce, And we never felt we could do as well as Pearson or any of the other established players. That caused us to re-evaluate and this year we are giving tutoring away for free! That probably sounds crazy since we have live tutors on the other end working with students, but we have a very healthy home tutoring business, and exposing more parents to tutoring through their students’ work at school could cause them to want to try tutoring at home.”
One of the things included in the book The Smartest Kids in the World” was information on how parents in some of these high-scoring countries spend a big chunk of the family budget on tutors. No one in ed reform likes to admit this, because it doesn’t serve the goal of bashing public schools, but what the parents are essentially doing is BUYING those test scores in a private market- a cost the parents pick up.
Public cost + private tutoring cost = high scores.
All it does is shift the cost for education from the state to individual parents. It’s not that it costs less in these other countries- it’s that it costs less TO THE STATE.
http://educationnext.org/john-danner-education-entrepreneur-doubles-human-capital/
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I sometimes get scared for my grown kids because I don’t know how they will navigate in such corrupted markets. It’s hard enough to make good choices when there’s regulation. It’ll be nearly impossible with no regulation. They won’t have time to do anything else other than research as best they can and try like hell not to get robbed.
They’re essentially have two full time jobs- their actual work they get paid for an hours and hours of unpaid labor trying to determine which of these people are crooks.
I don’t feel like that can buy ANYTHING confidently anymore. It’s just corruption all the way down.
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I’m with everyone on this!
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Free Market is NOT SO FREE.
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It’s free money for those who control it
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Yes and Yes .
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Zero interest for Me, Thirty percent for Thee…
It’s a pretty sweet racket, when JP Morgan Chase borrows from the Federal Reserve’s Discount Window (yes, they actually call it that) at less than two percent, but charges up to thirty on its credit cards.
State usury laws were abandoned in the late 70’s, in the first wave of financial deregulation that helped bring us where we are today. It’s time to bring them back.
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Among the few occasions where I felt compelled to “fire the client” and did so, Equifax is one such occasion. Data management — practices, technology, and people (lots of “skill”-only H1B’s) — always on the cheap, so as to maximize profits. Very little intrinsic, fundamental interest in quality of data architecture necessary for undergirding data security. So no surprise at yet another data breach.
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The alleged “free market” is a convenient myth propagated by the Top 10% Parasite Class, which always includes the President, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the CEO’s of Wall St. and War St., to keep raking in their wealth while the rest of us either barely manage or are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.
The U.S. of Oligarchy is now starting to face the destruction brought on by anthropogenic/capitologenic climate disaster, with its resultant fatalities, homelessness, and financial ruin. The current regime, including some Quisling Corporate Democrats, refuses to do anything to end Fossil Foolishness (Dem. Senator Heidi Heitkamp appeared recently beside Trump in Bismark, ND, as the ignorant Trump bragged about how wonderful the oil sands pipelines were, due to his “great” presidential actions).
The destruction via privatization of our public schools, as well as most other public institutions (except the already partially-privatized military, which the Corporate U.S. Empire still needs to protect its exploitation of global natural resources and labor, paid for by OUR taxes), will very soon pale by comparison to one of the two threats to our existence: Catastrophic Climate Disaster (the other threat is nuclear war, which Trump and his neocon advisers foolishly think the U.S. can “win” and still survive).
See this, by Paul Street, a U.S. historian: Global Capitalism’s Reckless Greenhouse-Gassing of the Planet by Paul Street + Are Irma-like Super Storms the ‘New Normal’? +
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Very well said, John.
Paved paradise and put up a charter school.
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I’m happy Mr. Ogizalek is at a school where the children are still valued. Unfortunately, my last three schools before I retired were already being compromised my the District and administrators. I had children, who desperately needed counseling or services the social worker provides. I had to fight tooth and nail to get them anything. I was punished by not being allowed to make appointments for my students with the psychologist to get them help. I had to go through the woman the principal appointed to make appointments. She made me jump through a million hoops and never allowed me any appointments. These children fell through the cracks. I finally had a lawyer friend, who worked with the Sudanese community, get permission to deal with the school on two brothers’behalf. One had a severe stutter. I was told he had it from learning English. The other couldn’t do 1st grade math in 4th grade. Now they are seniors. The one only stutters when nervous or upset. The other is special ed in the correct program. I was forced to my last school. I have no regrets.
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The main thing we can count on with regard to corporations is that the government has their backs, not ours. Not one person from Wall St. went to jail for all the crooked dealings that brought about our financial meltdown. Sure, they pay a fine, but nobody serves time. Hobby Lobby, the company, offended by birth control, had to pay a $3 million dollar fine for smuggling Iraqui artifacts out of Iraq. Nobody is talking about it, but the likely way for them to acquire these would be to buy them directly or indirectly from Isis. Nobody is going to jail. It will be interesting to see what happens with Wells Fargo with all the fake accounts that were set up in unsuspecting customers’ names. They’ll probably pay a fine, and I am not not holding my breath that any executives will do jail time. If teachers fake a bubble test as they did in Atlanta, they can go to jail for racketeering! There’s justice for you.
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Joni Mitchell
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“Call there on any given day and within a minute you’ll not only have a real person helping you, but you can go right to the top and talk to one of our principals, too.”
At my son’s school, the principal hides in her office all day. If you’re lucky and catch her, she’ll listen to what you have to say and then respond to the effect of, “It’s not my problem.” She’s a real treasure.
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At my daughter’s school the principal is warm and gushy and effusive and she’ll smile and agree with whatever you say, and then she’ll go right back to doing whatever it was that you were there to discuss in the first place and nothing changes. She’s a treasure too.
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What a pleasant surprise — usually when I get a response this fast it’s NYCPSP haranguing me.
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“O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
Guess that principal read Hamlet.
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FLERP! – Speaking of treasures….
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If you want honesty and helpfulness, don’t talk to the administrators. Try the teachers. Administrators work for promotions. We teachers work for you.
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If you don’t want to talk to a machine when you call a big corporation, there is a website called “Get Human,” that gives you the phone number to talk to a real person.
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From a NY Times op-ed piece today: “Perhaps the most maddening part of the Equifax breach is that the credit-rating industry is itself unforgiving in its approach to even the smallest error. I’m still dealing with the damage to my credit rating that resulted when I forgot to return a library book and a collection agency was called in (for a paltry sum). The Equifax executives who let my data be stolen will probably suffer fewer consequences than I will for an overdue library book.”
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And they will do nothing, even if the ding on your credit is not yours. My husband and father in law have the same name. My father in law’s credit is not great. While their birthdates and SS numbers are nowhere close to each other, the credit bureaus keep dinging our credit for another’s problems. It’s infuriating.
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Apparently they’re not terrified of losing your business.
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How,is this a “free” market? If,we’re not satisfied with a credit reporting bureau’s service, what can we do? Take our business elsewhere? (“I’m sorry, I only use credit cards or accept loans from banks that don’t use Experian!”) Post a bad review on Yelp?
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One of the great things about Experian is that most people have no memory of ever choosing to become a customer of Experian. Is there any real competition between the credit agencies? Does anyone have any recollection of one of the credit agencies making some effort to convince them to use them instead of some other service?
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If you have the courage, downoad and read the Equifax privacy statement.
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I’m guessing it’s roughly equivalent to the Department of Corrections privacy statement.
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We are not customers of Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion. We are the product. It is companies, banks, credit card companies that are the customers. We have no choice since all three agencies collect financial data on us. I am sure you have experienced or know someone who had to go through any three of them to correct a bogus report.
And then this little ditty came through NBC News: Rolling back credit bureaus regulations
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/republicans-congress-want-roll-back-regulations-credit-bureaus-n800471
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