Privatization of the Public School System

MyDD had an item on this this week called, "Social Security Privatization Fails; GOP Turns to Public Schools"

The partial privatization of Social Security pushed by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress failed miserably last year, failing to really even get off of the ground as a result of widespread public disapproval. Stymied on that front, the White House and it's GOP allies in the Congress are now turning to another government program, public schools, for another effort at partial privatization.

http://www.mydd.com/...

They tried it with social security and they are trying it with American public education!

The education gap in the U.S., like the wealth chasm, is growing ever wider, and equal educational opportunity, the perennial dream of working-class and progressive people, is being undermined by neo-conservative forces.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/...

The conservative movement, being thoroughly anti-union, has at its heart a desire to rid the United States of the two remaining unionized sectors of the national economy: Public Education (teachers unions), and Public Employees. In service of these goals, the movement has moved aggressively against both public schools and public school teachers.

Of course, the movement is also interested in converting to private profit the estimated $400+ billion annually spent on public primary and secondary education.

http://www.mediatransparency.org/...

The argument.

Our elementary and secondary educational system needs to be radically restructured. Such a reconstruction can be achieved only by privatizing a major segment of the educational system--i.e., by enabling a private, for-profit industry to develop that will provide a wide variety of learning opportunities and offer effective competition to public schools. The most feasible way to bring about such a transfer from government to private enterprise is to enact in each state a voucher system that enables parents to choose freely the schools their children attend. The voucher must be universal, available to all parents, and large enough to cover the costs of a high-quality education. No conditions should be attached to vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment, to explore, and to innovate.

This article appeared in the Washington Post on February 19, 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Washington Post.

http://www.cato.org/...

The retort.

In public schools today, little is safe from commercialization and privatization. A wide variety of companies and corporations are attempting to take over virtually all of the work traditionally performed by school district employees, from teaching to providing student transportation to cooking meals to cleaning and maintaining school buildings and grounds, and more.

The attempted corporate takeover of our system of education has its roots in support services - it is in this area that private contractors have been around the longest, and that contracting out is the most widely practiced. The National Education Association is strongly opposed to privatization because of the threat that it poses to the quality of education, the accountability of public schools to the communities they serve, and to the well being of children in school.

NCLB and "Starve the Beast".

The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act is a clever long-range political ploy to discredit public education by branding good schools as "failures" and to drive American education toward vouchers, charter schools -- and even resegregation.

That's the bitter conclusion reached by the leaders of groups representing Massachusetts' school committees, teachers unions, superintendents and administrators.

"Starve the Beast" (or STB) is a conservative political strategy which uses budget deficits to force future reductions in government expenditure, especially spending on socially progressive programs. The term "beast" is used to denote government and the social programs it funds, including publicly-funded health care and education, the implication being that expenditure on such programs, or the programs themselves, is wasteful or destructive.

As usual, the cons use the religious right to undermine the American public school systems with political fights such as "school prayer" and "intelligent design".

"Intelligent Design" is essentially a marketer's strategy to distort science with a theologically influenced pseudo science, using sophistry, the ancient art of talking around something and inundating questions with high sounding but inaccurate or irrelevant information, to advance the interests of right-wing religionists.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/...

The American people fight it, locally, with the landmark case "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District"
http://en.wikipedia.org/...

The GOP takes up that local fight.

Friday, July 21

It was reported today that the Pinellas Republican Party has committed $50,000.00 to local School Board races. The money went to Nancy Bostock, Peggy O'Shea and to one of my opponents Carl Neumann.

See article at http://www.sptimes.com/...

And editorial at http://www.sptimes.com/...

Elections for School Board members and judges are intended to be Nonpartisan. Legally all that means is that there are no separate Primary elections in which voters get to chose a Democrat and a Republican to face each other in a General election. My campaign has always been Nonpartisan and Bi-partisan, It will continue to be so. All of my actions as a School Board member will be Nonpartisan and in the best interest of first students, then parents, and lastly tax payers and no one else.

http://www.jackkillingsworth.com/...

Friends, the fight for the heart and soul of America is just as important in our local school committees and city councils as it is in Congress and Washington, DC.

There is evidence that there is an effort by this White House to undermine and do away with our current public school system. Not to reform it but to eliminate it.

As I was driving home from work today, I was listening to NPR and was taken aback by this report. Do yourself a favor and listen.

Public vs. Private School Report Spurs Controversy - http://www.npr.org/...

As usual, the Bush administration was playing politics by burying data it doesn't like.

Public schools performing favorably with private schools when students' income and socio-economic status are taken into account, according to a new report from the U.S. Education Department. The findings counter a popularly held notion, that private schools outperform public schools.