Christie Announces Pilot Program To Privatize NJ Public Schools -- And Help His Friends
New Jersey's answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking the first steps toward enriching his friends and benefactors by privatizing public schools:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced a pilot program on Thursday that would allow private companies to run public schools in some of the state's chronically underperforming school districts.
The public-private partnership would authorize school management organizations to operate five schools, and would target some of the 100,000 New Jersey students now enrolled in 200 chronically failing schools, the governor's office said.
The state's teachers union, which has clashed with the Republican governor over cuts to school aid and other issues, said the plan was part of Christie's "ongoing effort to privatize public education in New Jersey."
[...] Christie has appointed as his acting education commissioner Christopher Cerf, the former president of Edison Schools Inc., the country's largest private-sector manager of public schools. The company is now called EdisonLearning.
Oh yeah, Christopher Cerf! Look at the chart at the top of this post and see if you can follow with this post from Blue Jersey:
Billionaire Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News, which promotes both a "corporate education reform" agenda and politicians like Governor Chris Christie to carry that agenda out. Murdoch recently hired Joel Klein, former NYC Schools Chancellor and toady to billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to run Wireless Generation, Murdoch's venture into the education business.
Klein is the former boss of Christopher Cerf, currently Acting Commissioner of Education under Chris Christie. Cerf's last edu-business venture before accepting the position was as founder of Global Education Advisors, which "consulted" with the Newark schools on a plan to vastly increase the numbers of charter schools in the city.
The $500,000 for the report came from the Broad Foundation, funded by billionaire Eli Broad. The foundation also funded Cerf's training as an education administrator.
Yes, for some odd reason, Cory Booker, Newark's mayor, refused to disclose who funded the study.
Cerf contributed to the campaign of Newark's Mayor, Cory Booker, who has been intimately and illegally involved in the "reform" of Newark's schools. Cerf was most recently seen at Booker's State of the City address. Booker is also working closely with Chris Christie and their good buddy, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, who freely admits he is "investing" in Booker.
Charter schools in NJ are also being heavily promoted by Derrell "The Freman" Bradford. Bradford was recently appointed to an "Educator Effectiveness Task Force" by the Christie Administration, despite his embarrassing lack of education experience or credentials. That task force issued a report that flew directly in the face of all serious research on teacher evaluations.
Those are the schools in the low-rent district. Let's look into the microcosmic parallel: the students who need the most help are the ones who are punished the most. It's happening on the school district level in NJ and the push is on to "fix" schools everywhere by getting money-makers involved. Schools are not supposed to be about making money, they're about educating children.
For years I believed in the charter school message, until I became a teacher and started applying for jobs. Here in Texas, the charters pay the absolute bottom minimum to teachers, $27,000. Can you imagine? This is about $10,000 less than most districts' starting pay. The per-student budget paid by the state is the same, so where's the difference? You know who gets that extra money? The owners.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
The old saying goes.
Exactly. It's the same model as for profit health insurance - and look how well that's working out for us.
Those that espouse "small government" politics should be denied access to public funds for their incomes. Apparently government is only bad when they're not making a buck off of it. Freakin' hypocrites.
as the privatized prison system. We see how well that has worked..... well, for the Owners at least.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
regulates what we can or should eat, when it comes to education, we need to ask ourselves, "Is our children learning?"
The answere is no.
And the poison pill that was "No Child Left Behind," that basically evicerated education in this country, and the effect it had on children, is now being used as a call to privatize education.
We once had the greatest education system in the world - from Pre-school to Doctorate level.
The Reagan "Devolution" started this spiral to the bottom by cutting Federal funding, and allowing 'faith-based' initiatives into education.
We should look at what worked before, and not rush to priviatize everything on God's green Earth.
But, that ain't gonna happen - not after "Citizens United" privatized our election process.
We are well, and truly fucked, folks!
A wise man once told me, “Cheer up things could be worse”.
So, sure enough I cheered up …
Things got worse
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not.
- Dr. Suess
LOL
Now we're #43 and falling fast. It certainly predated Reagan. Read John Taylor Gatto.
Why am I starting a teaching career when I know all about the "dumbing down" process that has been purposefully implemented for at least a century? Because I can make a difference to somebody, which is better than sitting home bitching.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
Out of curiosity I googled John Taylor Gatto. I don’t know if I would consider someone with his view of education a trusted source (unless I worked at Fox)
I am not disputing that the U.S. started its fall from grace prior to Reagan although I recall the 1960’s with the space race a time of increased education efforts, especially in science (my memory also not the most trusted source)
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not.
- Dr. Suess
BIG LIE
Please point to any corporate run private school that does all of the following:
1) Accepts any child
a) no matter how poor
b) how undermotivated the parent(s)
c) no matter how poorly performing academically
d) no matter whether they are physically or mentally handicapped
2) Provides better results with all those kids than the public schools
3) spends less per child while accomplishing 1) and 2)
4) is able to make a profit
There is no way that privatizing public schools will cost the taxpayers less money without flushing standards down the toilet and sacrificing kids.
If you live Wonderland with the Queen and the White Rabbit. You see, this has nothing with educating our kids, this has to do with first the profits to be made from the billions spent on education in this nation, and second, controlling the curriculum of schools, so that they aren't educating children, but churning out workers instead. Conservatives have never wanted an educated public, afterall, out of public education came the womens' movement, civil rights, unions, etc. So this is something conservatives have never liked. They want workers who'll work at whatever pentance they decide to pay, will work in crap working conditions, and who'll keep their damned mouths shut as they're being abused. Unfortunately too many Democrats (i.e. Conservadems) are now on the whore train the GOP has always been on. These people have sold their ass to the highest bidder, and so the average person in America doesn't matter anymore. There are many of us who figured this out years ago, but there are too many still living in the narrative put out by Washington, no matter what party puts it out.
Yes, because adding a 20% profit margin will help control the costs of educating our kids, and will definitely lead to better performing schools. This is what qualifies as "good government" as far as the insiders think, including our president. This guy is considered a front line GOP candidate for the presidency of the US. Of course this nonsense has served this nation well over the past 30 years hasn't it. That rabbit hole keeps deeper and deeper, reality matters not any longer.
Yes. That's worth saying again.
Adding a 20% profit margin will not help control the costs of educating our kids. It will not make their education better and it will not help "under performing" schools.It will only bleed off funding (in the form or profit) that might otherwise make these things happen.
You don't teach Johnny to read by removing 20% of the letters in the alphabet.
Selling poor children's futures to corporations. They'll become good little wage slaves now.
This is just sickening. I can't understand how New Jerseyites(?) haven't tarred and feathered this pathetic excuse for human yet.
Do you know how much tar and how many feathers it would take to tar and feather him
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not.
- Dr. Suess
Send double extra bacon cheeseburges with mayo, and chili cheese fries - oh, and Christie-size that order!!!
Can you call it privatizing when government money goes to private companies? That's tax money too.
No one's going to school after January of '17 anyway.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
if what we want is to get our society even more used to being classist, and at a younger age.
There's nothing to prevent private grade and high-schools from starting on their own now, as far as I'm aware. This appears to be a program to convert public schools to being privately managed while still using public funds. That's the real problem. It isn't really "privatization" when you use public funds to pay private companies to fulfill public responsibilities.
Not only do I not understand these crack pots, but I don't understand how their political opposition even accepts the premise of the argument before arguing against it. This isn't a "free market" adventure. Nothing prevents completely private funds from starting private schools now. This is a scheme to give public funds to for-profit companies. It will be more expensive. The incentive would be to make a profit, not to educate.
Their argument is consistent, though they creatively rephrase it often. Government is bad, can’t run things correctly, and there’s a too much waste. They assume that a private for-profit organization will trim the fat, eliminate the waste, and make learn’n better – like walking the isles at WalMart.
It never happens that way.
Government is in the job of serving the people. At least it is supposed to be. Business is in the job of making money. Those two jobs are mutually exclusive. If a government program or mandate such as education has problems, then identify and fix those problems. Privatizing is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
This should not be a debate about government vs business methods of arriving at solutions. It's about ethics. And to have ethical management, the concern is what the conflicts of interest are, and how to minimize this. This can be done either with a government solution, or with a business solution, but all too often, in fact, we get collusion between government and business such that there are greater conflicts of interest than if it's just one or the other.
So when you say that "their argument is consistent...government is bad, can't run things correctly, too much waste" the contra case is the pro-government people say the same thing about businesses "businesses are bad, can't run things correctly, too much waste in the form of profits". Both sides get it wrong. There are all sorts of examples of fucked up government behaviors, because the incentives are wrong, the conflict of interest too great. And the same thing can happen to business. And businesses are incentivized to pollute the political process by appealing to government to create crony-capitalism / state-capitalism. It's got too much of the worst aspects of government and business.
That's why this privatization scheme is doomed to fail, because it will be a private company managing schools ostensibly for profit, but using public money. That's not the way to do it. If they want a private school, they should find their own private funding. If they want a public school, they should use public funding and management who answer in part to taxpayers, and in part to experts in education.
That's one huge shitty thing about public education is how f'n political it is. That's how we get public schools telling book publishers how to edit their history books, and classes required to teach about Jesus living with dinosaurs, and openly questioning the validity of biology.
I'll go along with that. I think we're both saying the same thing, only you've said it better.
One thing to note about how our culture defines "business". Businesses are neither moral, nor immoral. They're amoral. We've successfully separated the people who run the businesses, from the businesses themselves. That also involves separating and excluding the necessity for ethical behavior. It needn't be like this, but that's the climate we've created. It's also a poor excuse for disregarding unethical behavior.
And you're absolutely right about the conflation of large business and government. Our current crop of government leaders appear to believe that they serve businesses. They do not. It's not their job to ensure the profitability of their contributors. It's their job to insure the welfare of their constituents - the people who elected them, and ALL of them. Not just the ones who pay the most.
what happens when USA Inc. relocates to the Cayman Islands as a tax dodge?
Can Jabba the Hutt be RECALLED?
Please say yes, and get to it New Jersey.
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds--Bob Marley
that these people are ideologues, that these types of policies will fail and they'll cost more money than a typical public school would. Logic and facts don't matter. They have the power and they are using it for their benefit. They're using it to further their ideological goals. Simple, straight forward and sad.
They get away from it because there is no mass, organized movement forcing them to do otherwise. Will people in NJ get out and do something about this? Probably not, things obviously have to get much worse for people to get involved themselves. By then it might be too late.
Isn't this fat turd's approval rating above 40%? I don't know much about NJ politics, what the hell am I missing? WHAT do they approve of?
It comes as no surprise that destroying our educational systems is an integral part of a multi-pronged attack on our citizenry in behalf of greedy corporate psychopaths.
You see, it's all happened before, and for pretty much the same reasons.
Go back to the days of William Mc Kinley and the Robber Barons.
Same old ignorant populace and same old snake oil.
The ultra-rich like to tout themselves as exemplars of what's possible for all of us if we only work hard enough, and if you're poor, it's your own fault.
The wealth part is true to some extent. If the wealth of our nation were evenly distributed, we'd ALL be millionaires.
As for being poor, this is nothing more or less than the theft of wealth through low wages, undereducating ordinary citizens, and unfair taxation of incomes.
I'm not advocating the elimination of rich people; I'm advocating the elevation of poor ones to a level where the playing field is more HUMANE.
Ignorant people simply don't possess the fund of knowlege necessary to see greedy psychopaths as the heartless, destructive parasites they actually are, and that's just the way the parasites like it.
christ-ee here,believes in the ryan plan.........ANOTHER LIBERTARIANS IN REPUBLICAN CLOTHING,fuck people,call them out on it...........they're 10-15 % of the people that vote!!!!!!! and what? we are going to let them control every discusion about every facet of every americans life?.......fuck ron paul and the ayn rand dick he rode in on!!
....the fools do not realize,a population that can ,..... not paticipate .............in the 'economy'...,can not keep it viable!..........."we are listening,.......and we're not blind.,......this is your life....this is your time."
And all these FK'N Reslug assholes wonder why mainstreet is fighting back against the destroyers of the free world.
Charter schools always work so well and you know the best will be set up in the inner city.
Jeanne
What do they do with transitory students? Children of drug addicts? Students who've been assaulted? Students who can't afford a pencil much less money for coats in winter, breakfast...who have to leave early to take care of the youngest child in the family? Students who've dealt with murder of a loved one? Who listen to conversations about prison? Who are new to the country and don't speak English? Who use a wheelchair and need handicap access? Who are severely dyslectic?
Do these people seriously have a clue what the school system is about? My kids went to school in the suburbs and still knew kids who faced these issues. You have a tiny cultural system inside every school and you deal with all the problems you see in the city. All these guys who are gearing up to take the challenge are going to be swimming in the muck in two weeks time. They need to enter the system and sit with the people who deal with it. The burden is profound. The rewards if passionate are profound.
Jeanne
Christie is a corporate tool. A mobster. As a part of the system of government, Christie is engaging in a specially destructive kind of organized crime.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Another means of going backwards! Whatever Christie comes up with, always cost the NJ tax payers
more money. Don't let it happen!
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