Profits and losses

Push to privatize public education benefits fat cats, not students

By Barry Friedman

Illustration by Georgia Brooks

Of all the awful ideas in politics these days—balanced budget amendment, elected judiciary, constitutional convention, flat tax (to name just a few)—nothing leaves more of a stench than charter schools and vouchers.

The lobbyists who push this agenda (aided by local, state and national representatives who line up for the swag and instructions on how to sell the con)¹ believe that the best thing for public education is the introduction of the profit motive—their profits. Schools will do a better job of educating children, they contend, if there’s competition between institutions—winners and losers.

Can’t wait.

Maybe venture capitalists can do for education what they did for housing. God forbid something in this country would be allowed to operate without someone, somewhere, taking a cut. Fourth graders, IEDs, soap—they’re all the same, just products to be marketed to this loose affiliation of carnival barkers, charlatans, congressional drones and grifters.

Which brings us to former Dist. 11 Democratic state Sen. Jabar Shumate, who resigned his seat in January to take a job with the American Federation for Children—a singularly horrendous name in a singularly horrendous field—as its state organization director and national director of legislative affairs.²

“I knew I did not want to continue on the treadmill of politics,” Shumate said. “This was a perfect place for me because it gave me a chance to continue doing things that are important to me.”

Perfect…really?

The AFC is largely financed through a foundation started by Betsy Prince DeVos, whose husband’s family owns Amway and whose brother, Erik Prince, founded the military and security contractor Blackwater.³

Come again. Amway? Blackwater?

It gets worse.

The American Federation for Children (AFC) is a conservative 501(c) advocacy group that promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other avenues.⁴

For the love of Sofh (the Egyptian Goddess of Education), Senator, you resigned your seat in the Oklahoma senate to work for a company borne of Amway and Blackwater and raised by ALEC? You traded thirty minutes on a treadmill for a career in Gomorrah.

Here’s what Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education and the country’s ballsiest critic of this kind of education reform, said about AFC⁵:

The American Federation of Children is a rightwing organization that spends heavily to promote vouchers and to support candidates in state and local races who support vouchers.

Which might explain why AFC is so giddy about its new hire.⁵

The organization says it is committed to school choice, which it defines as public funding of private-school attendance through vouchers and scholarships.

Read that carefully: public funding—better known as your tax dollars—being shoveled to for-profit companies to educate your children.

Here’s how it works.

A private group or individual submits an application to the state to run a charter, which is kind of a hybrid public/private school. Once approved, the applicant receives state funds to run the joint.

(Author’s note: Only a cynic would suggest there’s a quid pro quo between who gets approved and the aforementioned lobbying. Call me a cynic.)

Let’s continue.

The charter receives waivers from local school districts on approved teaching methods, curricula, hiring protocols and how money is spent—including expenditures per student—in exchange for a promise of better academic results. The group or individual receiving the charter—and this is the money shot—is also allowed to take a management fee (of your tax dollars, let’s remember) off the top. This vig comes out before one textbook is bought, one teacher hired, one special-ed program developed. If the charter doesn’t turn a profit, like any business, it closes. And if students—including those in Shumate’s 11th district—are inconvenienced or burdened by having their school shut down, well, tough. That’s how the world works, kids.

Ravitch is not happy.

Who decided to monetize the public schools? Who determined that the federal government should promote privatization and neglect public education?⁶

And not happy with good reason.⁷

Ultimately, both the founding CEO of Philadelphia Academy Charter School and his successor were charged with stealing almost $1 million from the school’s coffers, including money students had collected for a Toys for Tots campaign. The two men — one of whom had only a high school education — also allegedly engaged in questionable real estate deals. As a result, the high school paid rent money for its facilities directly to them.

Grifters gotta grift.

So, how do the academic outcomes of students enrolled in charters compare to those in traditional schools? Eh.⁸ How are the profits of those charters? Bam! ⁹

With vouchers, it’s a different kind of bait and switch, promising choice, delivering illusion. Students in Shumate’s district would receive an education voucher of, say, $2,500 to attend whatever private school they wanted. Unfortunately, private schools are under no obligation to accept any of them, and the state education cuts that would have to occur to pay for the vouchers would hit local communities and schools the hardest.

And not for nothing, but tuition at Holland Hall, to give one example, is $17,300 per year, which means a student—even if accepted—would be able to attend for about a month and a half.¹⁰

But back to the star of our show.

Shumate, who’s been an advocate for both charters and choice, received $4,500 from the group during his years in the senate and spoke at AFC meetings and conferences. So this is not a surprising move on his part, just an unconscionable one—especially considering the issues (aside from education) his new bosses embrace.¹¹

Efforts to advance shoot first laws nationwide accelerated … when the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) adopted a model law bearing many similarities to Florida’s [“Stand Your Ground”] law. The ALEC model was developed in conjunction with the NRA, which has funded ALEC for years and, until 2011, co-chaired the council’s Public Safety and Elections task force that developed the model shoot first law.

Lovely, huh?

This, too, gets worse.

A new examination of the gun agenda of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) reveals numerous extreme bills advanced on the watch of Koch Industries as a leader and funder of ALEC.

Amway, Blackwater, AFC, ALEC, the NRA, and the Kochs. What, no Halliburton?

In going over to the dark side, Shumate abandoned his constituents and left them without representation until April, when a successor will be chosen in a special election (seven weeks before the end of legislative session). He walked away from an Oklahoma Democratic Party already on life support (with his resignation, there are only seven Democrats in the state Senate). And then, as if the sellout weren’t bad enough, he used those closest to him for cover.

“At this time,” Shumate said in making the announcement, “I have to think about my family.”

Perfect.

1) patch.com: Shameless Lobbying by Charter Schools Jeopardizes Solid Special Education Reform

2) tulsaworld.com: Former state Sen. Jabar Shumate joins school-choice organization

3) abcnews.go.com: Blackwater Renames Itself, And Wants to Go Back to Iraq

(Also, this: guns.com: Blackwater: New Name, New Ownership, New Company?)

4) sourcewatch.org: The American Federation for Children

5) dianeravitch.net: Who or What is the “American Federation for Children”?

6) huffingtonpost.com: Time for Congress to Investigate Bill Gates’ Coup

7) npr.org: Investigating Charter Schools Fraud In Philadelphia

8) huffingtonpost.com: Charter School Performance Study Finds Small Gains

9) pando.com: The big money and profits behind the push for charter schools