Simple steps for profiting from the destruction of public education

Dennis Sparks outlines a simple process for destroying public education and moving public funds into for-profit hands:

Demonize public education, teachers, and teacher unions. Use the imprimatur of "reform" to shift public resources to for-profit companies.

Exploit this country's financial crisis to achieve ideological ends. Blame public education for economic problems, including the outsourcing of jobs.

Begin with low-performing schools because of the long-standing challenges they face. Then expand "reform" to suburban schools using low standardized test scores and teacher evaluations as evidence of their ineffectiveness.

Transfer public money with minimal public oversight and accountability to corporations that manage for-profit schools and provide standardized testing, among other services.

Consign to "traditional public schools" students whose high-cost special needs make them less profitable. Then blame resource-starved schools for not succeeding with those students and begin anew to find new ways to drain those schools of their remaining resources.

It's already well underway and politicians from both major parties as well as corporate CEO's are reaping the benefits. As Sparks concludes, "Money that would benefit students is siphoned off as corporate profit."