Why do teachers’ pension funds invest in stocks of corporations that are actively undermining public schools and their teachers?
K12 Inc. manages a chain of online charter schools that are noted for low performance, high attrition rates, and low graduation rates. Their teachers never meet students. They have large classes, no union.
New York State Teachers Retirement System Makes New $100,000 Investment in K12 Inc. (NYSE:LRN)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Members: Tell NY State Retirement, “Divest from K12 Inc., now!”
Ridiculously stupid.
Check out the executive salaries:
https://www1.salary.com/K12-INC-Executive-Salaries.html
We could hire a lot of teachers for 12 million dollars a year.
I wonder how much of that is public funding? The vast majority, I would think.
Isn’t government contracting great? Such a money saver. And so efficient, too! All the money goes to 5 people at the top, none of whom live, work, spend or invest in any of these communities.
Just ship your local school funding directly to the executive suite, never to be seen again.
The online schools must be on the ropes in Ohio. They’ve stepped up the paid advertising by what seems like 4-fold. Looks like people have figured out this was just yet another over-hyped fad by ed reformers.
Nothing I like better than paying my school taxes to advertising agencies and media companies. This ed reform “innovation” is just super- now we get an additional 10% skimmed off the top before they “educate” a single student.
They’re creating jobs in advertising, all paid for with funding that was supposed to go schools. Can someone tell me about “adult interests”, again? All of these folks are “adults”, I assume.
I will definitely be sharing this one with all my former colleagues. We need to share this as widely as possible and demand divestiture.
What is worse it’s a bad investment! https://seekingalpha.com/article/4163194-k12-inc-s-crony-capitalist-profit-machine-looks-like-finally-dying-50-percent-downside
Sickening
Agree. Not in New York but this investment is wrong. Why on earth?….
This should come as no surprise to anyone. The switch to defined contribution retirement plans ensured that nearly everyone would become entrenched in a filthy system. It is just as likely that your funds are also invested in the private prisons that keep immigrant children in cages. I know that you are focused on the assault on public schools and that is also important to me. But it is the broader, unregulated diversion of public assets, as well as your retirement funds, toward private corporations that is the source of many of our woes. We will not be able to make progress if we only look at the issues that affect us personally rather than seeing this systemic corruption for what it is.
But while we’re at it – I would be interested in finding out the average ratio of superintendent to teacher pay these days. I suspect this is another area that has gone off the rails.
I wondered what was the point of investing anything at all? The institutional investor bought 3,300 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $100,000…. it was no more than I could have invested by myself out of my IRA. Is there a spy element or something?
Whoa….what’s with that?
WTF!
Oh, get a grip, people. You sound like those who get excited about 3 million dollars worth of corruption and really do not know if it is any different than 3 billion dollars. Maybe I do not know what the 100,000 dollars is for….does it drip down every 3 minutes, adding up to far more than 100,000 dollars. How much of a dent does it put in the overall accounts of the retirement funds? I can respect the idea of the principle at stake is more important than the principal—but just how big a deal is this, and why was it made? If the 60,000 draws 10 percent interest—–is there a guarantee that the 6000 will remain available before bankruptcy? Somebody made this decision…..has an explanation been offered—regarding 60,000 dollars. I concede—–I must be missing something….but wtf is not much help teaching me anything.