Cashing in On Charter School Failure
If Hillary truly has the nomination sewn up and wants to win the enthusiastic rather than grudging supports of progressives, one way she could do it is by admitting Wall Street driven K-12 public education "reform" is a failure and corrupt to the core, and that she will put education policy back in the hands of educators and academics not sociopaths on Wall Street pushing methods they would never tolerate at the pricy schools where they send their own kids.
If the DLC/New Dem/whatevers picked just one or two policy areas where they wouldn't let their big donors and past and future employers set the agenda, they might be able to hang onto power for another election or two.
Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from Californias taxpayers, California Virtual Academies (CAVA), the states largest provider of online public education, is failing key tests used to measure educational success. According to an investigation by The San Jose Mercury News, fewer than half of the thousands of students who enroll in CAVA schools graduate, and almost none of them are qualified to attend the states public universities. All the while, the publicly traded corporation that owns the network, K12 Inc., continues to rake in massive profits.
Online charter schools also known as cyber or virtual schools are funded like charter schools with physical buildings and face-to-face interaction. When a student enrolls in an online school, the school receives most of the taxpayer funding that would have gone to the students local public school.
Without strong oversight, this can be a windfall for companies like K12 Inc. The Mercury News investigation reveals that CAVA teachers have been asked to inflate attendance and enrollment records used to determine public fundingstudents who spend as little as one minute during a school day logged into company software can be counted as present. And while records show that the companys employees started each of K12 Inc.s 17 online schools in California, the applications they filed to open the schools described the founders as a group of parents, none of whom were named.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-cohen/cashing-in-on-charter-sch_b_9853042.html
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Baobab
(4,667 posts)TiSA and GATS are global pact designed to deregulate service sectors to the advantage of multinational firms. The rules could jeopardize many basic policies: educational subsidies for public institutions; state licensing practices for higher education institutions;U.S. accreditation practices; wages and working conditions for U.S. educators; and more.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Stargazer99
(2,599 posts)Business bleeds the general public and no one puts an end to it. Charter schools are an excuse to leave the poor behind. This country leaves a lot to be desired
Baobab
(4,667 posts)Only true public services are exempted:
'services' includes any service in any sector except services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority;
'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers
Igel
(35,356 posts)As soon as you look at more than 3 you realize this.
That said, I have seen a lot of students enrolled in "virtual school."
It's where my school district puts students for a variety of reasons.
(1) The course isn't offered in the district, or at least not at the school.
(2) The kid has transferred in from out of state (or out of country) with big gaps that'll mean a 5th and possibly 6th year of high school. Those gaps could be their own fault--"I failed math." Or those gaps could be the state's, "We didn't have to take 9th Grade Cow Pruning and 10th Grade Advanced Sheep Plopping and I'm transferring to Podunktonia School District as a senior."
(3) The kid has failed classes and needs to graduate to make the school's numbers look good. Or just because "our job is to make sure they graduate".
Parents opt for virtual school without the district's consent or input
(4) because their kid has behavioral, emotional, health, or academic problems that will keep the kid from graduating.
Notice, that 3 of the 4 kinds of students have a choice: virtual school or not graduating. These are *not* college bound kids. These are kids who are about to be enrolled in the organization "Future Unsuccessful Community Kids -- Underperforming", or FUCK-U. Some virtual schools are for home-school drop-outs, where the parents lacked the academic chops and self-discipline to impose academic order on their non-prodigy progeny
The other group often has decent academic chops, but a specialized interest. They want astronomy, but it's not taught; or they want AP statistics or Japanese. They're usually already enrolled in a good school, but sometimes the choice for an academically well-off kid is virtual school or sucky school. They usually do well--I've seen some of them transfer into a public school for a year or two for some reason--and aren't well-served by some virtual schools.
Because virtual schools where I live and work are most often designed to let kids in groups 2, 3, and 4 to pass. Period. In this, they succeed. They're not usually expected to go to college. They're just expected to go.
That virtual schools here don't serve a purpose for which they are not intended is, um, completely expected. Expecting otherwise is like going to a Sanders rally and being disappointed that you don't see JayZ performing singing tenor in Tannhauser in Syriac while wearing kabuki dress. They're different kinds of things and one shouldn't expect them to commonly co-occur. Unless you're unfamiliar with Sanders, JayZ, heroic operatic tenors, Syriac, and/or Tannhauser.