Tuesday, October 21st, 2014
Stephan: The Charter School Movement, whatever it might have intended in the beginning, has become something of a racket. Like all privatization movements it is about finding a way to tap the public treasury to make profit. Unfortunately, what it was supposed to deliver has not panned out -- improved education for children. Note particularly the involvement of the Koch brothers. For close to a decade they have been exploring ways to use their money to bias the education of children to their worldview on the theory that if they can get them young they can mold them to support the policies they espouse.
In late February, the North Carolina chapter of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation — a group co-founded by the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers — embarked on what it billed as a statewide tour of charter schools, a cornerstone of the group’s education agenda. The first — and it turns out, only — stop was Douglass Academy, a new charter school in downtown Wilmington.
Douglass Academy was an unusual choice. A few weeks before, the school had been
warned by the state about low enrollment. It had just 35 students, roughly half the state’s minimum. And a month earlier, a local newspaper had
reported that federal regulators were investigating the school’s operations.
But the school has other attributes that may have appealed to the Koch group. The school’s founder, a politically active North Carolina businessman named Baker Mitchell, shares the Kochs’ free-market ideals. His model for success embraces decreased government regulation, increased privatization and, if all goes well, healthy corporate profits.
In that regard, Mitchell, 74, appears to be thriving. Every year, millions of public education dollars flow through Mitchell’s chain of four nonprofit charter schools to for-profit […]
In late February, the North Carolina chapter of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation — a group co-founded by the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers — embarked on what it billed as a statewide tour of charter schools, a cornerstone of the group’s education agenda. The first — and it turns out, only — stop was Douglass Academy, a new charter school in downtown Wilmington.
