Darcie Cimarusti, communications director for the Network for Public Education, reports on the assault on public school funding in Iowa. K12 Inc., the for-profit virtual charter chain, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is noted for high attrition rates, low graduation rates, low test scores, and high profits. Its top executives are each paid millions of dollars.
In multiple states across the country omnibus schools choice bills with sweeping charter and voucher provisions have been introduced. NPE Action has been following these bills here. Just such a bill was introduced in Iowa, SSB 1065 which would modify the state’s existing charter school law, which requires the approval of a local school board, to allow charter applicants to apply directly to the state board for a charter with no local approval required. Lobbying disclosures show that K12 Inc., which recently rebranded as Stride, Inc., has lobbied in favor of the bill.
Should the Iowa legislature send this bill to Governor Kim Reynolds’ desk, no doubt K12’s lobbying efforts will intensify. Currently K12 operates 51 online charter schools in 20 states.
Iowa may be next.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Iowa Alliance for Choice in Education and the Iowa Association of Christian Schools are “partners” with the Iowa Catholic Conference in efforts to achieve the following goal, “…the public power …must see to it that public subsidies are paid out (so) that parents…(can) choose the schools …they want for their children.”
In other words, the state’s Christian and Catholic religious leaders want taxpayers to fund one or all of the following -indoctrination in gender discrimination and anti-abortion beliefs, and indoctrination to believe churches (religion) should be allowed to ignore civil rights guarantees provided by American law, etc.
Defenders of public schools should not ignore the clear and present danger the well-funded religious hierarchy poses to American rights.
“In multiple states across the country omnibus schools choice bills with sweeping charter and voucher provisions have been introduced”
It’s interesting how the charter lobby and the voucher lobby have now merged and are marching lockstep.
It was inevitable. Once they redefined “public education” to mean “publicly funded education” they obliterated any difference between the two.
I wish they’d just drop the pretense and run on privatizing public education. They have moved so far in that direction there’s no going back anyway and the public should be informed that the goal is complete privatization of the whole sector.
If the public wants to privatize public education in the US, they certainly can elect people who will do that, but they should be informed going in that’s the goal. This inexorable march to privatize everything that’s not tied down while denying that’s what they’re doing is just blatantly deceptive and also unfair to the tens of millions who attend public schools who were not told their schools are being phased out.
Let’s have the privatization debate since the alternative is ed reformers privatize with no debate. Drop the pretense.
The deformers will never “drop the pretense” of being “all about the kids” and non-threatening to public schools. That is their mask and they will never remove it.
This is typical ed reform “analysis”:
https://www.the74million.org/article/analysis-new-research-on-student-funding-performance-shows-new-orleans-charter-schools-get-more-bang-for-the-buck-and-boost-kids-earning-potential/
All charters are better than all public schools and they’re cheaper, too.
If this is what your “movement” wants, to turn every public school over to a private operator, why continue to deny it? At least then people can hire/elect ed reformers if they favor privatization and NOT hire them if they don’t. As it is now they’re hiring and electing people who claim to “support public education” when really what they support is an ideologically-driven view of governance that eradicates public entities.
Just tell them the goal is to replace all their schools with private contractors. It is the goal. Certainly the tens of millions of families with children in public schools deserve to know that this “movement” doesn’t invest in or support their childrens schools. Why on earth would we hire these people to set public school policy? Best case is they don’t actively harm our schools while they’re pursuing their ideological goals. I’m paying people to NOT HARM public schools now? Why? Is it like ransom?
Half the charters in New Orleans are D or F schools. Virtually all-black. Not much bang for the buck there.
Charter expansion follows the same MO. The charter lobby greases the palms of corrupt politicians that have no problem changing charter authorizing rules to favor the interests of the charter lobby. Then, they expand charters in the state, even failing cyber charters like K-12, Inc. These grifters act as though they are working for better “public schools,” when they are really shoveling public money into private pockets. Lots of red states try to present private charter schools as public charter schools. The public rarely understands that these so-called choices undermine the existing public schools.
The link to rebranding K-12 as Stride is not quite as informative as visiting the Stride website where K-12 is in place, but augmented at scale with two other major programs. One is for Career Prep (25 pathways in “high demand fields” marketing lingo). The Other is Learning Solutions, a school or district-level platform with data-dashboard, and more, e.g., recommended professional development. Core courses and electives are available for browsing.