By voucher and charter and other means, profiteers want access to public school funds
In a recent story in The Education Report, I note that privatizing profiteers are using the rhetoric of the culture wars to gain ground in the quest to access funds meant for public schools.
What’s interesting is that local communities aren’t clamoring for charter schools. Instead, these schools (and also school vouchers) are being pushed by Gov. Lee and a cabal of privatizers who seek to dismantle the public education system.
In the piece, I take a look at work by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider that seeks to illuminate the current state of the battle over public schools.
As the pair of public education defenders note, the true story of public schools is one that largely looks like success – higher test scores, for one and other outcomes that bode well for society writ large.
But, they say, this is expensive – and deprives oligarchs of an opportunity to turn a profit.
Here’s how they explain it:
It’s very common to hear that our public schools are failing. And it’s very useful rhetoric if you’re running for office, or if you’re a policy elite intent on convincing people that they need you. But it simply isn’t true. If you look at polls, a majority of Americans do believe that the nation’s schools are mediocre; yet that same percentage of people report that their own children’s schools are doing quite well. So, which one are they likely to be more informed about—the schools down the street, which their children attend, or the 98,000 schools they’ve never set foot in? The simple fact is that for the past four decades, since the Reagan administration’s “A Nation at Risk” report, we have been telling ourselves a story about failing schools that doesn’t match reality on the ground. And, by the way, if test scores are the currency that you value, scores are up across that period.
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