Conservatives
seem to have a thing for fast food. The founder of what would
eventually become the country’s largest private prison corporation,
CoreCivic (formerly CCA), once declared,
“You just sell [private prisons] like you were selling cars or real
estate or hamburgers.” More recently, the Foundation for Excellence in
Education, an organization founded by Jeb Bush that has lobbied for its corporate funders, including the world’s largest education corporation, Pearson, wrote that public schools should be thought of as fast food restaurants.
But
providing public goods and services is nothing like selling hamburgers.
In a democracy, human beings should control the public schools,
infrastructure, and social services in their communities. Fast food
customers vote individually with their wallets, which means they really
have very little say. Does anyone really want a handful of corporations,
the likes of McDonalds and Burger King, teaching children and locking
people up in prison?
This point is especially true of public education, and is driven home by a report In the Public Interest released last week authored by Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon. Lafer found that taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charter school buildings in California, yet the state has little to show for it. In the past 15 years, charter schools, which are privately operated, have received $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized financing to lease, build, or buy facilities. Yet much of this investment has gone to schools built in neighborhoods that don’t need them and schools that perform worse—according to charter industry standards—than nearby traditional public schools. Taxpayers have provided California’s underperforming charter schools—an astounding three-quarters of all the state’s charter schools!—with an estimated $750 million in direct funding.
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This point is especially true of public education, and is driven home by a report In the Public Interest released last week authored by Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon. Lafer found that taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charter school buildings in California, yet the state has little to show for it. In the past 15 years, charter schools, which are privately operated, have received $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized financing to lease, build, or buy facilities. Yet much of this investment has gone to schools built in neighborhoods that don’t need them and schools that perform worse—according to charter industry standards—than nearby traditional public schools. Taxpayers have provided California’s underperforming charter schools—an astounding three-quarters of all the state’s charter schools!—with an estimated $750 million in direct funding.
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