State School Reforms Aim For Profits, Not Students
At what point will the citizens of this state realize this GOP led education reform has absolutely nothing to do with education? Eliminating property taxes on for-profit charter schools, exempting them from collectively bargained contracts, and opening the door to instructional staffing by multinational corporations don't help students. It's a cash grab, plain and simple.
What this legislature has very cleverly done is legally pave the way for private companies to gain greater access to the billions of taxpayer dollars earmarked for education. This isn't about helping students, giving parents greater choice or improving the quality of teacher instruction; it's about cutting regulations, destroying contracts, privotizing teachers and crippling the base of its political adversaries.
- Ben Harwood, Royal Oak The Detroit Free Press, October 2, 2011
What this legislature has very cleverly done is legally pave the way for private companies to gain greater access to the billions of taxpayer dollars earmarked for education. This isn't about helping students, giving parents greater choice or improving the quality of teacher instruction; it's about cutting regulations, destroying contracts, privotizing teachers and crippling the base of its political adversaries.
- Ben Harwood, Royal Oak The Detroit Free Press, October 2, 2011
Local Charter Schools Fail to Make the Grade by Will Rubenstein
I use to think it was just me, but education reform seems to have become Oberlin's go-to topic of political dialogue over the last year or so. Maybe this has something to do with the overwhelming Democratic majority on campus, since Democrats are sharply divided on many education issues and attempting to engage this campus's smattering of conservatives in heated debate on other issues of national importance could get a trifle one-sided - or perhaps a college like ours paying particular to education issues is only natural. Either way, support is widespread here for what I see as misguided reforms to public education, beginning with a well-intentioned measure that went sour in the implementation: the independently run but publicly funded schools known as charter schools. (continued)
