This is a sad day for Puerto Rico.
The Governor imagines he will save money by handing public money over to charters and vouchers.
Does he know that charters demand equal funding and choose the students they want?
Does he know that voucher students get worse results than their peers in public schools?
Probably the hedge funds that own the Commonwealth’s debt didn’t tell him.
Puerto Rico is now open to edupreneurs, no-excuses charters, and corporate exploitation of its children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is absolutely laughable. The charter school industry is a cancer growing in America. Anyone that doesn’t see this is either complicit in it or just plain oblivious.
Jeb Bush likes to give speeches that evoke God, family, love, etc. But he is despicable man, who has profited from the charter school craze in Florida and across the country and who has stolen what should have been well-rounded school years from kids ages 5-18.
All paths lead back to Success Academy…
Just got back from San Juan last night. Everyone we spoke to, from taxi drivers, Uber drivers to locals on the beach, everyone spoke of the corruption in the Puerto Rican government & the US mainland government. You can guess how they feel about Trump. They are aware and awake about it all. They don’t want privatization of their schools.
Hedge funders and disaster capitalists are circling. Saw many suits and ties at the Condado Vanderbilt hotel. The Vanderbilt’s majority interest is owned by Paulson & Co. It is an investment management firm with approximately US$21 billion in assets under management and has offices in New York, London and Hong Kong.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefunds-paulson-donation/hedge-fund-mogul-paulson-donates-8-5-million-to-nyc-charter-school-idUSKCN0Q41XD20150730
Hedge fund mogul Paulson donates $8.5 million to NYC charter school:
BOSTON (Reuters) July 30, 2015 – Billionaire investor John Paulson, who credits his success on Wall Street to a top education, is donating $8.5 million to New York City’s largest network of charter schools. The gift to Success Academy marks the 59-year old hedge fund manager’s second multi-million dollar pledge to a school in two months, following a record $400 million donation to Harvard University in early June.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefunds-paulson-donation/hedge-fund-mogul-paulson-donates-8-5-million-to-nyc-charter-school-idUSKCN0Q41XD20150730
Not sure how the $600+ million PER YEAR that Harvard gets in Federal research dollars can be justified when Harvard has a $38 billion endowment and just got $400 million from one donor.
I don’t think it can be. Surely, there are public universities that need the money more than Harvard, Yale and other private universities.
Harvard has become a parasite on our government sucking the lifeblood out of our public institutions.
Really, all paths lead back to Success Academy and Harvard.
This was set up long ago. It is no coincidence that so many of Puerto Rico’s debt vultures are also charter school investors. Dan Loeb, the chair of Success Academy’s board of directors bought discounted Puerto Rican debt obligations years ago and set about acquiring energy utilities. Two other board members and the charter chain’s founder also invested in the debt, lobbying against a bailout package in Congress.
Then when hurricane Maria struck, federal aid represented only a fraction of the amount Texans got after hurricane Harvey. This put the governor in a desperate position and he quickly agreed to mass privatization of schools.
Now a bunch of cryptocurrency millionaires are buying up land and continuing the tradition of white colonization. Where is the US press in showing the evidence mass-charterization failed in New Orleans, Detroit and other cities?
A colleague just returned from Puerto Rico says KIPP and Success Academy have been checking out the buildings
Neoliberal colonialism in action. However US schools and public assets are next as the orgy of asset-stripping continues unabated.
Here’s a quote from the article that warrants some discussion:
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a phone interview that she was pleased with the bill’s amendments.
“We’re still disappointed that charters and vouchers will siphon off some of the much needed funds in Puerto Rico,” she said. “At the same time, the Senate put the brakes on this open-ended process and required standards for the charters so they could not be an open invitation for fraud, mismanagement and profit-making.”
Ms. Weingarten should realize that the appetite for profit is voracious.Once the privatizers get a foothold, they will incrementally siphon funds away from public schools into the charters and vouchers. The brakes might be applied now, but as we’ve witnessed in the mainland, ALEC will do everything possible to put the petal to the metal in the future.