Here is Andrew Coulson Series on Virtues of Privatization
Diane Ravitch offers more on schools in America:
Here is Andrew Coulson Series on Virtues of Privatizationby dianeravitch
Watch libertarian Andrew Coulson’s film, now showing on some, not all, PBS stations around the nation.
It was paid for by libertarian foundations that support privatization. The lead funder–the Rose-Mary and Jack Anderson Foundation– is a conduit for the Koch brothers and DeVos family foundations.
http://www.pbs.org/show/school-inc/
Here is my response.
Carol Burris and I will soon be posting a point by point refutation.
Please let PBS know what you think.
[cut-and-paste]
Berkeley sociology professor Martin Sanchez-Jankowski discovered while spending nine years at street level in five New York and Los Angeles poverty stricken neighborhoods that ghetto schools fail because so many students — and faculty! — see nothing sufficiently remunerative waiting for them in the US labor market when they graduate to make it worth making any serious effort now.
Well paid Chicago Teachers Union teachers as we well know do not fit that description. You get why you pay for.
I fail to see how students in poor, crime ridden neighborhoods are going to be elevated by an influx of lower paid, higher turnover teachers whose charter management is motivated by profit. They won’t get what we don’t pay for.
http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/martin-sanchez-jankowski
[that’s-pretty-much-all-there-is-to-it]
Watching my own kids in public school, I cannot say I disagree with the “too much testing” argument. And after they’ve taken their O.W.L.’s or N.E.W.T.’s for the year (or whatever they are called), the teachers seem to take the rest of the year off!
As for Finland, great idea, but I really don’t think we can get folks to go along with the “Pass this test or you don’t go to college” idea. We have Community Colleges so that kids who don’t do well on such tests (as the SAT and ACT) can still have a chance to prove themselves capable of college-level work.
If it is going to broadcast this propaganda drivel, PBS should immediately take the lead by refusing to take one more dollar of taxpayer money.