Over the past Month State Level Republicans Have Taken Steps To Privatize Schools

[applegrove]

Over the past Month State Level Republicans Have Taken Steps To Privatize Schools

by Rmuse at Politicus USA

http://www.politicususa.com/2013/06/10/month-state-level-republicans-steps-privatize-schools.html

"SNIP....................


There is nothing as terrifying, and threatening, to fascists as an educated populace that is unlikely to fall victim to lies and misinformation meant to sway an ignorant population’s opinion that being set upon by tyrants is in their best interest. One tactic to control a population is prohibiting education for the masses by either restricting access to education altogether, or devising a means of controlling curriculum and instruction through private and religious institutions paid for with public funds that, in America, has long been a goal of conservative-movement fascists and actively pursued by corporate Republicans and their legislative arm the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Over the past month, while Republicans have kept stupid Americans mesmerized with phony scandals and outrage that the African American President is somehow imposing on their freedoms, state-level Republicans have quietly and with little exposure taken steps to privatize school systems, restrict education to white wealthy children, and ensure that education is steeped in religious and conservative propaganda.

Last year during the general election campaign, Rick Santorum opined that “smart people will never vote for Republicans” and it may be the first true utterance from the religious sycophant’s mouth. It also informed just one of the reasons Republicans are ramping up efforts to privatize America’s public education system, shutter schools in poorer neighborhoods, and shifting public school funding to charter schools owned and operated by conservative and religious crusaders. There were three specific stories that went unnoticed by the public at large that portend Americans’ tax dollars are being funneled to private education, the prison system, and into wealthy neighborhoods while poorer communities’ schools are closed and sold to corporate-controlled private charter schools.

In Wisconsin, at the specific direction of the American Legislative Exchange Council, Governor Scott Walker inserted a provision into the state’s budget that means school privatization will be enacted without public input, discussion, or debate. One of the provisions in Walker’s ALEC budget creates what they labeled a “Charter School Oversight Board” that approves entities as independent charter school authorizers following ALEC’s Next Generation Charter Schools Act. According to Julie Mead, chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the ALEC measure “wrests control from school boards, and likewise from the community that elects those school boards,” because according to ALEC’s law, if a charter school proposal is rejected by the community and school board, an ALEC-installed authorizer would become “a defacto appellate mechanism” and the private charter school operator could move on to the unelected independent authorizer for approval. Wisconsin voters rejected a similar proposal in 2011, so ALEC instructed Walker to insert the measure into the state’s budget that also expands the school voucher program to divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to subsidize private and for-profit schools.

The proposal also creates a new teaching license for individuals with no formal education background to teach in the charter schools that is ALEC’s Alternative Certification Act. It is ALEC’s attempt to reduce requirements for becoming a teacher to produce failing schools, push more privatization, kill unions, and allow publicly-funded ideological religious curriculum to slip unnoticed and unaccounted for in charter schools that are immune from public oversight. As it is now, Wisconsin taxpayers will have sent an estimated $1.8 billion of public school funding to private and religious schools by 2014-15 as a result of privatization interests spending well over $10 million on Republican candidates with Walker receiving $2.35 million to push ALEC’s privatization efforts.

.....................SNIP"

[elleng]

1. Past YEARS!

and been catering to uninformed and undereducated for MANY years, that's what they DO!

[okaawhatever]

2. People need to wake up,. Be afraid, be very afraid. This is something we should be protesting in

the streets.

[giftedgirl77]

3. Oh Hell No

This is disgusting, I'm very well versed in the law & can't fathom how this is legal in anyway shape or form.

I mean I guess I can understand why you don't have to have any type of formal education to teach at a charter school if you just get to make the shit up as you go but come on. This BS needs to stop & soon before these rat bastards run this country into the ground.

[david13]

4. I don't like private school, as it has become

nothing but a diploma mill, a factory printing paper, but I have never liked public school.
Who was it that said public school is a place where you send your kids to be raised by other kids, so they receive a lowest common denominator of culture? That's what I see, and have seen for a long time.
dc

[HiPointDem]

5. kr

"One of the provisions in Walker’s ALEC budget creates what they labeled a “Charter School Oversight Board” that approves entities as independent charter school authorizers following ALEC’s Next Generation Charter Schools Act.

... the ALEC measure “wrests control from school boards, and likewise from the community that elects those school boards,” because according to ALEC’s law, if a charter school proposal is rejected by the community and school board, an ALEC-installed authorizer would become “a defacto appellate mechanism” and the private charter school operator could move on to the unelected independent authorizer for approval.

Wisconsin voters rejected a similar proposal in 2011, so ALEC instructed Walker to insert the measure into the state’s budget that also expands the school voucher program to divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to subsidize private and for-profit schools."

[applegrove]

6. They want students to learn from video and be managed

by private contractors. And of course they assume they will have control over the agenda of those videos.

[Lunacee_2013]

7. K&R.

Everyone needs to see what these bastards are up to.