General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGRAPHIC: Why Corporations Want Our Public Schools
YES magazine has a couple of articles on this including a good history of the conservative assault on public education.
Corporate Democrats betray their true loyalties on this issue: they are like Abraham sacrificing our kids on the altar to their jealous god on Wall Street, and they can't claim Republicans are making them do it in heavily Democratic areas like New York and Chicago.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Thanks for sharing.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)yurbud cares, too, about education and where the piratizers are taking our nation's future.
Thanks to you both.
elzenmahn
(904 posts)...is what this privatization scheme has ALWAYS been about.
Private markets should stay out of public education. If you want to send your child to a private or parochial school, fine. That's your choice. But the "invisible hand" needs to stay out of the classrooms.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)they would START by building entirely private schools, recruiting their rich friends' kids, and proving the model works BEFORE exporting it to public education.
The fact that they don't do this proves that they don't believe their own bullshit themselves.
elzenmahn
(904 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)These people have not a shred of ethics.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com/2007/08/big-enchilada.html
Some years ago, a friend who works on Wall Street handed me a stock-market prospectus in which a group of analysts at an investment-banking firm known as Montgomery Securities described the financial benefits to be derived from privatizing our public schools. "The education industry", according to these analysts, "represents, in our opinion, the final frontier of a number of sectors once under public control" that "have either voluntarily opened" or, they note in pointed terms, have "been forced" to open up to private enterprise.
Indeed, they write, "the education industry represents the largest market opportunity" since health-care services were privatized during the 1970s... "The larger developing opportunity is in the K-12 EMO market, led by private elementary school providers..." From the point of view of private profit, one of these analysts enthusiastically observes, "the K-12 market is the Big Enchilada."
yurbud
(39,405 posts)jsr
(7,712 posts)Overseas
(12,121 posts)Because the point of capital these days is not to create goods or services that improve the lives of citizens these days. The point of capital is to identify the largest pools of money in society, to leach onto them, with the aim of skimming off as large a percentage as they possibly can without killing the host, until they forget about that last part and decide to vivisect the goose hoping to get the next golden egg before the upcoming quarterly reports.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)SunSeeker
(51,787 posts)truth2power
(8,219 posts)Do you know why only the top half (#1 & 2) will print?
It won't print if I copy it from your OP and even if I try to go to the link and copy to Word. Thanks.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)mike_c
(36,281 posts)Everything is for sale in America.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)...Millionaire Corporate Power Brokers like Rahm Emanuel and Arne Duncan give a SHIT about how your 5th grader is doing in school?
OR
are they concerned about How much Public Taxpayer Money can they divert to the private pockets of their well connected 1% friends?
The Feeding Frenzy is ON!!!
I have no problem with "Charter Schools",
as long as they do NOT receive a single penny of Public Money.
We already have a Public School System.
If it is broken, it is OUR responsibility to Fix It,
not steal the money from it.
If somebody wants a Charter School,
let them find their money from "Charter" (Private) sources.
[font size=3]Go ahead and Privatize the Schools
and Bust the Teachers Union.
What are they going to do?
Vote for a Republican?
Hahahahahahahahaha
rwsanders
(2,613 posts)"capitalism" is no longer about making a product or providing a benefit to society. It is a process of finding revenue streams and diverting them into the hands of the 1%.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)+1
antigop
(12,778 posts)That's why companies no longer invest in infrastructure like they used to since they're goal is to maximize profit from existing capital, not create anything new.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)They keep voting in politicians who enact these policies and appoint corporate toadies like Duncan.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)or TFA folks leave after a year or so, and they can't find anyone that wants the job, will folks with kids in school FINALLY wake UP?? I think most folks with kids in school think 'nothing has changed' in the last few years, except "greedy" teachers get to pay more for their retirement and health insurance. OK, fair enough, we are paying now... but the demands just keep growing, and growing, and the deck keeps being stacked, and the game is continuing to be rigged.
AnneD
(15,774 posts)I am a School Nurse that has finally had enough. This 'greedy' educator, that has put up with everyone else telling me how to do my job but someone with actual experience. Kids don't have respect because it is not modeled for them, either by the parents or by our administration at the top levels.
I have worked here for 25 years. In the private sector, I can easily make 20-30K a year more......and we are comparing apples to apples not apples to oranges. I have been underpaid all these years, but it didn't bother me because I enjoyed what I was doing and was respected. I no longer enjoy it so I am leaving to make some serious money.
If you think they will have trouble replacing the teacher, try finding a School Nurse. We had 10 openings that went unfilled last year. I don't need to look into my crystal ball to know there will be even more next year.
And our brilliant legislator is instituting a pay for performance where everyone gets a base salary, like beginning teachers pay and then you get extra, based on your students test scores. I have no idea how they will judge a Nurse, but that will make the pay so erratic that one cannot plan one's life. In the 12 years we have had bonus pay, I have only received it twice. The rest of the time it was either stolen or I work in such an undeserved area that they did not score well enough.
As I said, I am cashing out my chips and going back into the private sector.
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)But I completely understand. The disrespect is soul- crushing, and life is too short. There are several positions like yours that will be impossible to fill.
AnneD
(15,774 posts)I am eligible to retire but I had thought of working a few more years as I was healthy and all. But after this leg. session when they started doing all this foolishness-I decided to vote with my wallet and boost my retirement savings. They are setting our schools up for failure and I am tired of watching it. If this education reform were so good, how come the scores get worse every year. Testing is just window dressing to distract you from the fact that they are stealing funds from education. They want a nation of slaves.
DamnYankeeInHouston
(1,365 posts)I left the Houston schools after 33 years. I still had some good years left in me. Retirement is heaven. I have the world's smallest preschool at my house. It broke my heart that I had to leave the public schools in order to teach. Good luck to you.
AnneD
(15,774 posts)with interest as I am in a similar situation. As a Nurse....I have always earned less than I could, but I loved what I do. It is and has been less rewarding over the last 5 years as more work is dumped on me. This year has been the worst. And this performance based compensation that they are going to enact was the last straw. They have had 10 unfilled School Nurse positions this year. I can assure you they will have at least one more next year. I have heard it from other teachers and Nurses....They are leaving the district and the Teach for America Kids aren't hanging around either once their contracts expire. Honestly, if my daughter were school age, I would home school her or we would be looking at private schools.
DamnYankeeInHouston
(1,365 posts)to have to tell parents to do anything else now than put there kids in Houston's public school. You will be fine. You will be able to work full time or part time on top of your pension. It's the students and teachers we leave behind that worry me. And it's the future of our uneducated country that scares me. It was a personal health issue for me. I couldn't bear the stress anymore. I look after teachers' kids and they tell me it's even worse this year. Your life will be wonderful in a few months. Hang in there.
AnneD
(15,774 posts)when all these edicts come down from high, people start stressing and jumping through hoops. I just smile, knowing that my time is short.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)Kaplan
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Kaplan made a lot of money for them, until it didn't.
The Graham family owned the Post, until they sold it to Jeff Bezos of Amazon. The Graham family still owns Kaplan.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Hear that, Mr. Obama, Arne?
We don't want a Bush scheme run on us.
Mr. President, the reason we supported you as we did is because we hated that fucking Bush and his policies so badly. There are NO GOOD BUSH POLICIES.
merrily
(45,251 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)niyad
(113,776 posts)blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Overseas
(12,121 posts)jwirr
(39,215 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)the only big prize left worth hanging around for.
spanone
(135,921 posts)Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)Thanks for posting, yurbud.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)to shame Democrats from taking money, advice, or free advisors from these people.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)Sometimes, even they know the stink of corruption is too great to cover up with a few air fresheners.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)If they could just be content with enough money for ten generations of their descendants to never have to work, no one would ever bother them and they could continue their degenerate lives of jaded debauchery.
By wanting so many of the marbles that there are none left for anyone else to even survive, they are going to end up losing everything.
I hope it is done peacefully, so we all have a chance to ask people like the Koch brothers what the fuck they were thinking while they are picking through the garbage for bottles to return for the deposit.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)and glad the thread is staying visible.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)"We know what you're doing and who you are doing it for. Stop selling our kids future to Wall Street sociopaths or we will replace you."
treestar
(82,383 posts)does anyone seriously believe they cooperate with each other to rule us all? Don't they compete? Seems they would try to destroy each other more than have time to attempt to control the public school systems, which must be numerous.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)They just have to make donations to the right foundations and politicians and they get the contacts with extremely lax oversight in nearly every place.
treestar
(82,383 posts)If they are the snakes we think they are, they wouldn't do that.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)project.
Think of it like defense contractors: we take it for granted that private companies build the weapons for our military. Sometimes they compete among themselves, sometimes one company buys up all its competitors, and sometimes they work as a cartel as in the market in overall.
But in general, being a defense contractor is a sweet deal because the people using your product don't make buying decisions, a small handful of legislators and Pentagon generals do. The contractors can legally bribe the decision makers with campaign contributions or high paying jobs when they leave government service.
And because the decision-maker is not the user, product quality and even price are not as important as they are for products sold to the general public.
It is the worst of the private and public sector.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)They are stealing my son's education and I can't tell you how much it pisses me off.