Starving States Opens Charter School Opportunities

The neocons under Reagan and then under George 2 pushed the Republican Party so far to the Right that the political center is now parked in Barry Goldwater former front yard, so that what appears as center right now would have qualified as lunatic fringe by most Americans 45 years ago when Goldwater politics carried Arizona and five states in the heart of Dixie.

From Paul Krugman at the NYTimes:

What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.. . .

. . . .

One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.

The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump. . . .

One of the last things "centrists" want to see from the Feds is public school support, whether it is new buildings and equipment or assistance to state departments of ed, which are now totalling up how many art, music, social studies, and health teachers will have to axed and how many reading and math classes will have to be combined in their states. For the "centrists," you see, any additional state aid for education would get in the way of the charter privatization juggernaut, which allows "schools" to operate out of strip malls, shut down Pizza Inns, or shuttered public schools, where teachers are not required to have the proper training and where they are paid, on average nationally, 20% less than public school teachers. Oh yes, they will be managed by the out-of-work "free market" acolytes who lost their asses and their jobs during our recent round of "free market" gorging.

This is all part of the third-worlding of middle America that is envisioned by the "centrists." Talk is circulating in Georgia now about converting the entire state to charters. The "centrists" want nothing to stand in the way of these kinds of desperation measures. See Georgia as a case in point:

The worsening economy for the state has more school districts considering converting entirely to charter schools.

The move would exempt the districts from many public school regulations like class size limits.

School districts would also have more say in how they choose to meet federal No Child Left Behind requirements.

The systems would be allowed to convert under a state law that went into effect two years ago.

Until now, few schools districts had considered the option.

No Bailout For Public Education

From TPM, Robert Reich:

By Robert Reich - December 3, 2008, 3:14PM

Our preoccupation with the immediate crisis of financial capital is causing us to overlook the bigger crisis in America's human capital. While we commit hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, we're slashing our outlays for public education.

Education is largely funded by state and local governments whose revenues are plummeting. As consumers cut back, state sales and income taxes are shrinking; three quarters of the states are already facing budget crises. State revenues account for about half of public school budgets and most funding of public colleges and universities. In addition, as home values drop, local property taxes take a hit. Local property taxes account for 40 percent of local school budgets, on average.

The result, across the nation: Teachers are being laid off and new hiring frozen, after-school programs cut, so called "noncritical" subjects like history eliminated, schools closed, and tuitions hiked at state colleges and universities.

It's absurd. We¹re bailing out every major bank to get financial capital flowing again. But we¹re squeezing the main sources of our nation's human capital. Yet America's future competitiveness and the standard of living of our people depend largely our peoples' skills, and our capacities to communicate and solve problems and innovate ­ not on our ability to borrow money.

What¹s more, our human capital is rooted here while financial capital moves around the globe at the speed of an electronic blip. Right now global capital markets are frozen, but the big money -- mostly in Asia and the Middle East -- is coming here, bailout or no bailout. At this point it's coming here in the form of purchases of dollars and of T-bills that are financing the Wall Street bailout. Eventually American assets will become so cheap that the money will come here to buy up the bargains.

It¹s our human capital that¹s in short supply. And without adequate public funding, the supply will shrink further. Don't get me wrong: I¹m not saying funding is everything when it comes to education. Obviously, accountability is critical. But without adequate funding we can¹t attract talented people into teaching, or keep class sizes small enough to give kids a real chance to learn, or provide them with a well-rounded curriculum, and ensure that every qualified young person can go to college.

So why are we bailing out Wall Street and not our nation¹s public schools and colleges? Partly because the crisis in financial capital is immediate while our human capital crisis is unfolding gradually. Headlines scream what's happening to our money but not to our kids.

Maybe it's also because we don¹t have a central banker for America¹s human capital ­ someone who warns us as loudly as Ben Bernanke did a few months ago when he was talking about Wall Street's meltdown, of the dire consequences that will follow if we don¹t come up with the dough.

Education Investment Rather Than Gimmicks

From an opinion piece by Bruce Fuller in the NYTimes:

. . . . More broadly, the Obama administration can then focus on strategic and long-term investments in schools, colleges and research centers. The political demise of the No Child Left Behind Act — its odds of survival continue to sink — offers the opportunity to rethink the federal role in education. Mr. Obama has wisely emphasized areas of investment that yield strong payoffs, like improving access to quality preschools for poor families.

Equally urgent, Washington should aid states in attracting smart and diverse young graduates to go into teaching. To retain them, educational institutions must become professional and supportive workplaces, not simply test-prep centers. This won’t be accomplished through attractive gimmicks, like more money for charters schools which, on balance, have yet to outperform regular public schools.

What’s key is for Mr.Obama’s transition team to stay honest to their boss’s resilient ability to screen out the static and stay focused on long-term remedies. Fresh infusions of bricks and mortar can spur job creation and inventive schools. Then, Washington can turn to human infrastructure, creating incentives and support inside schools that will enrich America’s teaching force.