Education “Reform”: Putting Middle Men First
At the Colorado Virtual Academy, which is managed by K12 and has more than 5,000 students, the on-time graduation rate was 12 percent in 2010, compared with 72 percent statewide.
That same year, K12’s Ohio Virtual Academy — whose enrollment tops 9,000 — had a 30 percent on-time graduation rate, compared with a state average of 78 percent.
Last year, about one-third of K12-managed schools met the achievement goals required under the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to Gary Miron, a Western Michigan University professor who called that performance “poor.”
But not poor enough to get investors to give up on the idea. Not when cracking the education market guarantees investors a steady, recession-proof stream of public tax dollars.
The Nation reports on efforts to “reform” public education through vouchers, charters and privatization. This “gold rush” in the K-12 online learning industry, according to one study “will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.”
Investment banker Michael Moe is one of those who has worked to turn public schools into Wall Street’s next “cash cow,” writes The Nation’s Lee Fang.
A veteran of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, [Moe] now leads an investment group that specializes in raising money for businesses looking to tap into more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money spent annually on primary education. His consortium of wealth management and consulting firms, called Global Silicon Valley Partners, helped K12 Inc. go public and has advised a number of other education companies in finding capital.
To help those companies land lucrative public contracts, Patricia Levesque, former lobbyist, advisor to former Governor Jeb Bush on education reform, told a 2010 education reform retreat of her plans in Florida to sponsor statewide decoy legislation — on promoting religious schools or union busting — aimed at keeping opponents busy while charter school bills fly under the radar.
According to a report in Mother Jones , former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, spoke at the 2010 commencement ceremonies for Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), Ohio’s largest virtual charter school. Bush has teamed up with a Democrat, former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, to launch Digital Learning Now, another “reform” initiative aimed at promoting public funding of for-profit virtual schools. Mother Jones calls online schools
… part of a larger agenda that closely aligns with the GOP’s national strategy: It siphons money from public institutions into for-profit companies (including those that are supporting Bush’s initiative). And it undercuts public employees, their unions, and the Democratic base. In the guise of a technocratic policy initiative, it delivers a political trifecta — and a big windfall for Bush’s corporate backers.
Like K12, Inc., ECOT’s performance falls far short of the hype. ECOT collects an annual $64 million in state tax dollars:
With more than 10,000 kids, ECOT is bigger than some of Ohio’s 609 school districts. But its test scores rank above those of just 14 other districts. In 2010, barely half of its third-graders scored (PDF) proficient or better on state reading tests, and only 49 percent scored proficient in math, compared with state averages of 80 percent and 82 percent, respectively. ECOT’s graduation rate has never exceeded 40 percent.
ECOT spokesmen argue that this is because it enrolls students already far behind in learning.
The stories continue to multiply. Bipartisan-sounding rhetoric aside, the feeding frenzy and the grifterism (see Schools for Scoundrels ) suggest that children’s education is not exactly the top priority for the school reform movement. The players, the performance and the profits in the reform gold rush suggest education reform is not about education. Not about children. Not about America’s future. There’s a conservative political tie-in, sure: big government. But it is only big government when public money is flowing to the wrong people. This “reform” is about the money, about the right people getting their cut of that steady, recession-proof stream of public tax dollars.
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