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Who Controls Our Schools? The Privatization of American Public Schools
The Independent Media Institute ^ | unknown | Don Hazen,Elizabeth Hines,Steven Rosenfeld,Stan Salett

Posted on 12/28/2016 6:09:56 AM PST by magna carta

(Download Link to entire article) The charter school deception is rooted in the shared beliefs of its founders. Corporate titans like the Walmart-creating Walton family, Bill Gates, and other very wealthy individuals have collectively spent billions seeding and sustaining this movement until states and the federal government passed laws and regulations sanctioning and subsidizing charter schools.

(Excerpt) Read more at facebook.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: charterschools; communists; education; indoctrination; privatization; publicschools; schoolchoice
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To: ecomcon

tell me how. When I clicked the link it downloaded on my computer. it is many pages and well-researched. It is in PDF form.


41 posted on 12/28/2016 7:22:45 AM PST by magna carta
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To: knarf; All

“Why Are Teachers Elected?
However, the public still sees teachers and their immediate family members voting on contracts with their own teachers unions. There are three reasons why most people elect teachers anyway. One is that school board elections are usually pretty minor affairs, with little known about the candidates and little media coverage.

The second reason is that, though board members are required to disclose conflicts of interest, candidates are not. As one citizen is quoted as saying, “I would venture to say that the majority of the taxpayers in town probably don’t realize that 2/3 of their elected officials can have no impact on [millions of dollars] of their taxes.”

http://www.cityethics.org/content/conflicts-teachers-school-boards


42 posted on 12/28/2016 7:28:12 AM PST by Beagle8U (Long live Yoga Pants!)
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To: vooch
government schools are evil

'Government School' does not exist. It is a brick building.

Government School teachers are people and people exist.

Government School teachers are & do evil. They vote as a gang against children. Take responsibility for your actions. Quit blaming others or hiding your wickedness. Be honest and at least folks will respect you, that you just act in your own coercive self interest, against little children.

It is wicked to hurt children. It is amazing how adults, like public teachers, hide like children, their own wrongdoing.


43 posted on 12/28/2016 7:28:54 AM PST by TheNext (Hillary LOST the POPULAR VOTE by 7 mil.)
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To: grania

The unions run the school boards because most of them are teachers or families of teachers.


44 posted on 12/28/2016 7:32:16 AM PST by Beagle8U (Long live Yoga Pants!)
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To: magna carta

CORRECTION-it is not ALICE but Charlotte Iserbyte. Sorry.


45 posted on 12/28/2016 7:43:56 AM PST by magna carta
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To: magna carta

Here is a link that will download the full document.
http://www.scoop.it/doc/download/1C5a9yoj_iKW3FQRpnzLk3X


46 posted on 12/28/2016 7:52:45 AM PST by magna carta
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To: Buckeye McFrog
But the public schools surely need the competition.

But charter schools aren't really going to be the competition you think they might be. It's state money running these schools, but without state control. You can bet that parents will have even less control than they do in public schools.

While there might currently be good charter schools, they'll be bought out by Soros-type organizations. The left wants to own schooling free and clear of gov't control; but of course still with gov't money.

47 posted on 12/28/2016 7:57:14 AM PST by slowhandluke (It's hard to be cynical enough in this age.)
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To: GingisK
The problem with public schools is almost never the teacher.

Nonsense. Go into any public school system and find an honest Principal. He/she will tell you the biggest problem they have is the union protecting abusive and incompetent teachers. You cannot get rid of a teacher once they have tenure, and far too many of them choose to just dial it in until they can qualify for their generous pension.

State and federal government is a huge problem, but it is not the biggest problem facing K-12 public schools.

48 posted on 12/28/2016 8:34:22 AM PST by Mase (Save me from the people who would save me from myself!)
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To: poinq
Have you heard the term “regulatory capture”

Bingo.

Our school board is filled with ex-teachers and administrators who needed a paid position with benefits after being forced into retirement. The school board position should be voluntary so it is truly about public service. Unfortunately, ours pays $50,000 a year so these folks look at it as employment. The results are predictable.

49 posted on 12/28/2016 8:45:21 AM PST by Mase (Save me from the people who would save me from myself!)
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To: Mase

And its really bad if it pays a pension. If that is the case. You can expect teachers to always get the job. A pension for them is worth maybe 500K for four years. Especially if those teachers need to get up to a 30 year cap. And they can do it without lowering their pay. Sometimes they have a clause which allows them to count their average final pay as the top 3 years of the past 10. That allows them add years without lowering their average pay.


50 posted on 12/28/2016 8:51:15 AM PST by poinq
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To: poinq
Exactly so. I think it's the pension that drives them to the board more than the salary. The taxpayers are very generous. Most have no idea and are too busy working through April every year, just to support this public sector, and don't understand that they are being robbed.

I'd love to see the school board position become voluntary. That would ensure the necessary turnover and volunteers from the private sector who would change how the schools are run. Unfortunately, the system has made people believe that the salary helps them attract the best and the brightest. Public service has become self service. The public education system exists to serve itself and the teacher's union. The public gets what it deserves for not paying attention.

In the last election, the winning candidate spent more than $100,000 to win the seat. It's nuts, but the reward is rich and the system always finds the necessary funds to protect their own.

51 posted on 12/28/2016 9:03:51 AM PST by Mase (Save me from the people who would save me from myself!)
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To: magna carta; All
Thank you for referencing that article magna carta. Please note that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.

If schools were teaching students about the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers as they should be, students would be able to point out that the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the corrupt feds the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes.

In fact, not only did President Thomas Jefferson indicate that the states would need to amend the Constitution to grant the feds the specific power to make policy for public schools, something that the states have never done, but using wide language, the Supreme Court has clarified the fed’s limited powers.

Patriots need to work with Trump to put a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes that the corrupt feds cannot justify under Congress’s constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.

Once unconstitutional federal taxes are stopped then the states will probably find a tsunami of new revenues that they won't know what to do with, improving public education for starters.

Patriots need to support Trump in draining the federal swamp of corruption.

52 posted on 12/28/2016 9:07:39 AM PST by Amendment10
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To: TheNext

The worst thing that ever happened to the US was government involvement in education. Everything government touches fails. The only solution is to privatize education at all levels, then parents and adult students will have real choice and there will finally be some progress in education. Public schools still do things the way they were done in horse and buggy days.

The problem is that people use schools as a place to house the kiddies while they are at work. There is no reason for a basic education to take 12 years. Most of what happens in schools is mind-numbing busywork. All students should be able to proceed at their own pace without having to march lockstep with a group of 30 that all happen to be born the same year.


53 posted on 12/28/2016 9:09:39 AM PST by Pining_4_TX (For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. ~ Hosea 8:7)
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To: Mase
Go into any public school system and find an honest Principal. He/she will tell you the biggest problem they have is the union protecting abusive and incompetent teachers. You cannot get rid of a teacher once they have tenure, and far too many of them choose to just dial it in until they can qualify for their generous pension.

You don't know what you're talking about. It's obvious you're just cutting/pasting garbage you've read elsewhere. What problems are you referring to? The lack of students learning? Violence in the schools?

First of all, go find an "honest" principal. Nowadays, they are totally political, dancing to the tune pressed upon them by politicians sticking their nose where it doesn't belong, in a field they generally know nothing about. These politicians have bought lock, stock, and barrel some crazy untested left wing teaching methodology sold to them by some ivory tower libtard whose only experience with such a program was with blond, blue-eyed darlings whose parents supported and supervised their learning. This program, such Commie Core, is dictated as "what will be" to principals, generally without any professional input from people with actual educator experience. The program is then dictated as "what will be" to the teachers, who have no choice but to implement it.

Coupled with this is the new trend of not allowing teachers to discipline students in a normal teacherly fashion. Everything is labeled "corporal punishment", from asking a student to put their cell phone away to telling them to be quiet and take out their textbook. Without discipline, you cannot have effective learning in a classroom because there will be too many distractions. And the students know it.

So the teacher, who has labored over crafting their lesson for a couple hours, is teaching to a bunch of kids who could care less--they're too busy playing with their cell phones, talking, walking the halls instead of attending class. These same students fail to turn in assigned homework, fail to take responsibility to study even for announced tests, constantly disrupt the class, and often fling insults, verbal or physical, at the teacher. You can imagine the abysmal grades resulting from this. Who is blamed? The teacher, of course. It's always the teacher.

Administrators change grades without even consulting the teacher. Teachers are called in for disciplinary meetings originating in complaints from snowflakes who could not bear to be told to put away their phone or cease talking during a lesson. The lax disciplinary atmosphere dictated by "progressive" administrators pretty much destroys any hope of being able to conduct a class without disruption.

Teachers are still held, nonetheless, to passing rates near impossible to attain under such conditions. There are such budget cuts to schools that it is impossible to get materials xeroxed, have pens or pencils, there are severe shortages of paper (I've seen teachers carrying around reams of copy paper with their names written on the package), shortages of textbooks, no working computers available for teachers to do work, software programs which don't work but which cost thousands of dollars, students being allowed to substitute online "learning" programs for classroom work, etc.

But of course, this is all the fault of the teachers and the union. The reality is that the unions are vampiric, sucking over a thousand dollars a year from teachers' salaries yet being totally in cahoots with the school systems to victimize their teachers with ambush observations (often out of license), false accusations, loss of days traditionally given off, longer hours, oversized classes, etc. which are never addressed. Instead, the union devotes teacher dues monies to promoting social justice causes and contributing (without input from teachers) to the political party of THEIR choice. Although a very healthy percentage of NYC teachers, for example, are not democrats, their union saw fit to donate 98% of their political money to the democrat party, to the Clinton foundation, and to innumerable other shady causes.

So being robbed of their autonomy in the classroom to teach their subject the way years of experience informs them it should be taught, being forced to teach in absolutely weird ways which actually impede understanding, having their students as their actual "bosses" who dictate what can and cannot be said or done in the classroom or they'll gin up some fake accusations threatening the teacher, being unable to impose normal discipline in their classroom, having to compete with cellphones the administration refuses to ban, being forced to violate the contract without any support from the union, having to spend hundreds of their own dollars in the classroom to make up for the severe lack of materials, etc., it is only logical that teachers are leaving the hell teaching has become. It is the mark of a healthy logical mind that one would not want to remain under the now constant lash. Is it a surprise that severe teacher shortages are developing and that some areas cannot even attract teachers with bonuses?

It's all the teachers' fault, though. Just keep repeating that. Won't make it true.

54 posted on 12/28/2016 9:33:16 AM PST by EinNYC
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To: Pining_4_TX
There is no reason for a basic education to take 12 years.

WOW! You have the Post of the Week!

It's amazing how many people do not 'get it'. Home school takes 4 years less. Technology driven likely 6 to 8 years less.

... march lockstep with a group of 30 that all happen to be born the same year.

You get it. You understand. Where else in society is everybody the same age? No place.

Your children are being RAISED STUPID! Nobody will save them but only you.

It is a competition for other's loot. Parents will always get junk education. Government always fails. Once you grasp that, life makes sense.

Public school is "neighbor subsidized baby sitting" demanded mostly by liberal women. It is the modern harem.
55 posted on 12/28/2016 10:05:54 AM PST by TheNext (Hillary LOST the POPULAR VOTE by 7 mil.)
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To: Amendment10

good references. Lately, the states and local isd’s are on their knees for cash using the carrot proffered to them by UN+ FED LED ED. They apply for Race to the Top grants get 30 mil and ensure Common Core is taught. How to stop?
The Islamic Charter Chain-Harmony in Texas mopped up with Fed grants.
We have Qatar the ISIS-sponsoring emirate in our schools teaching Arabic culture/language...etc.HISD got money from Qatar DIRECTLY.
With Corporate, non-profits comprising unelected school boards and POSSIBLY no open records. The possibilities are endless for education to become “training”-Social/emotional learning over fact-based knowledge more politically expedient for the aforementioned. There is a lot to think about here. ESSA the latest reauthorization bill (LAMAR ALEXANDER-TN) includes pipelines to Health Human Services (social workers/mental health experts roaming and diagnosing the kids) AND Department of Labor for the WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT. Many gears-many moving parts. We are now stuck in a maze.


56 posted on 12/28/2016 10:21:35 AM PST by magna carta
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To: Mase

They spent $100K to get elected for a $50K seat on a school board. That should tell you something. Its worth over a $100K to keep a seat that only pays $50K. I assume that the teachers in the union gave her that money.

A board seems like it should be a good vehicle to watch over an institution like a school. But its really a good vehicle to watch over an institution like a teachers union. If someone got mad and wanted to replace the board it would take 5 good people, lots of money and several election cycles to get it done. A board exists to safe guard that that never happens.

Democrats excel in winning over boards. Once they win over a board theymake sure that they never give it up.


57 posted on 12/28/2016 10:30:02 AM PST by poinq
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To: Pining_4_TX

In Houston at least, privatizing will be relinquishing control to such as the Greater Houston Partnership. I will not bore you with their extensive resume in open borders George Soros-type initiatives but suffice it to say that parallel societies in this large city includes every muslim nation on the planet and they need many services to platform them on the public dime. GHP is involved. Much much more...so unfortunately ‘privatizing” may not go in the direction you were thinking.


58 posted on 12/28/2016 10:31:04 AM PST by magna carta
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To: 1Old Pro

“I’m hoping Trump gets someone like Scott Walker to help his new Education Secretary”

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Ed Secretary, is a long time conservative activist for education reform, who was a key supporter helping Walker with his reforms as Governor of Wisconsin.


59 posted on 12/28/2016 10:44:55 AM PST by BeauBo
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To: Beagle8U

The only solution might be to abolish the school board and have the superintendent appointed by the mayor


60 posted on 12/28/2016 10:50:15 AM PST by SauronOfMordor (Socialists want YOUR wealth redistributed, never THEIRS!)
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